APPENDIX [S. Res. 143, 83d Cong., 1st sess.] RESOLUTION Resolved, That the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, or any duly authorized subcommittee thereof, is authorized and directed (1) to make a full and complete investigation and study of the accessibility of critical raw materials to the United States during a time of war; (2) to study and recommend methods of encouraging developments to assure the availability of supplies of such critical raw materials adequate for the expanding economy and the security of the United States; and (3) to report to the Senate at the earliest possible date, not later than January 31, 1954, the results of its investigation and study, together with its recommendations. SEC. 2. For the purposes of this resolution, the committee, or any duly authorized subcommittee thereof, is authorized to employ upon a temporary basis such technical, clerical, and other assistants as it deems advisable, and is authorized, with the consent of the head of the departments or agency concerned, to utilize the reimbursable services, information, facilities, and personnel of any of the departments or agencies of the Government, or of qualified private organizations and individuals. The expenses of the committee under this resolution, which shall not exceed $37,500, shall be paid from the contingent fund of the Senate upon vouchers approved by the chairman of the committee. [S. Rept. No. 689, 83d Cong., 1st sess.] The Committee on Rules and Administration, to whom was referred the resolution (S. Res. 143) to investigate the accessibility and availability of supplies of critical raw materials, having considered the same, report favorably thereon with amendments and recommend that the resolution, as amended, be agreed to by the Senate. The general purposes of the investigation authorized by the provisions of this resolution are explained in a letter from the chairman of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee to the chairman of the Committee on Rules and Administration, dated July 21, 1953, as follows: JULY 21, 1953. To: Senator William E. Jenner, chairman, Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. From: Senator Hugh Butler. Subject: Senate Resolution 143, authorizing a full and complete investigation and study of the raw-material situation of the United States by the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. In the opinion of our committee this investigation may be one of the most important for its effect on American security, ever to be held by a congressional committee. Much of our present national policy is based on the assumption that the United States is definitely a have-not nation in respect to a considerable number of vital and strategic raw materials. This contemplation has had a direct bearing on the conduct of our foreign policy. It has led us to underwrite the fiscal systems and world policies of various foreign states whose friendship is deemed of the greatest importance due to their possession of raw materials which we are believed to lack. The subcommittee has made a preliminary study of 38 of these minerals, as well as 3 fuels and 30 essential nonmineral materials, embracing many months of research. The results seem to make it clear that a careful inquiry should be made into the entire question. As the matter now stands there is every possibility that an aggressive adventure aimed at the destruction of this country may become attractive to the Russians on the simple score of a feasible short war. The strategic motivation would rest on an effort to cut off the United States from critical raw material sources essential to its industrial plant, and hence to its ability to wage war. It is well known that our existing Armed Forces in-being are wholly insufficient to act as a deterrent to Soviet aggression. Armed Soviet might outweighs us in every single department, with the exception of surface vessels plying the seas. In the event of open hostilities the first rush of Soviet offensive is certain to carry Soviet arms victoriously over a great deal of additional or peripherial territory. It is recognized that our great military potential lies in our ability to mobilize our tremendous productive resources for the long pull. In the end it may be assumed that we will overwhelm Soviet arms as we did those of the German-ItaloJapanese Axis, by the sheer mass weight and quality of the war materials which will beturned out by our mills, factories, and plants. No such potential exists at the disposal of the Kremlin. In making its military calculations the Kremlin is forced to consider that in any test of strength, where the time factor was an element, it would ultimately lose. Obviously this advantage accruing to our superior technology would be liquidated if our access to critical materials were limited or destroyed. By striking at the feeder lines to our industrial plant the Soviet could consider that it would immeasurably enhance its ability to emerge victorious. Such a prospect would appear immensely more attractive to the masters of the Kremlin than an attempted decision by pitched battle, or an effort to attain decision by atomic attack. World War II provided an object lesson into the possibility of reducing an enemy by economic siege. The effect of a strictured supply of such relatively unimportant materials as kapok and quinine were strongly felt. The effect of the loss of our rubber resources was for a while critical. Our ability to compensate for this deficiency by the use of synthetic rubber proved a factor of the greatest consequence in our conduct of the war. Similarly in World War I the achievement of the great scientist, Fritz Haber, in extracting nitrates from the air, saved Germany from an early and crushing defeat, allowing her to continue the struggle for 2 additional years. It is rational, therefore, to conclude that to deprive the American productive plant of the full flow of raw materials essential to its needs, would be to place our Nation under the most desperate possible siege, eliminating at a stroke the enormous advantage we held in World Wars I and II, in which our superior technology and industrial organization provided the key factors to victory. All of this bears with obvious importance upon the question of our national security and the possible strategy open to us. It is a matter which is sure to enter into enemy calculations. One of the great goals of Russian strategic operation could very well be the delivery of a lightning blow at our raw-material sources, in an effort to liquidate our capacity to fight a long war. Since a war with the Soviets may very well be an interminable affair outlasting in terms of time any feasible stockpile program we presently visualize, it seems mandatory that examination be made into the availability of all minerals and other materials in which we may be in short supply. This applies particularly where these materials originate in areas which cannot be strategically safeguarded by our forces and those of our allies, or which involve long hauls under conditions where safe conduct over the sea pathways cannot be guaranteed. The question of guaranteed access to materials known to be on the critical list is not a simple but a complex one. Under today's conditions many factors must be equated, including the political climate which applies to the area of supply, the defensability of the supplying areas under wartime conditions, and our ability to protect the supply routes by which delivery would be made to our ports of entry. It is necessary to consider the problem in terms of hostile as well as peacetime conditions. We must also consider the position as it would exist if we were forced back directly to the defense of our own hemisphere. The situation then would relate not only to our true potential, but to the time factor, which involves exploration, investigation, training, and necessary investment. Thus, we are compelled to consider the economic logic under which such mining operations as lead, zinc, copper, mercury, and tungsten are forced to compete with foreign exporters of these materials, and the effect on the ability of American mine operators to survive. Thus comparative working conditions and standards of living the world over are of direct security interest within the scope of this investigation. The protection which may or may not be given to American operators becomes an important and possibly a decisive factor. Among examples along this line, at a moment when the United States is using the greatest amount of lead and zinc in its history, our lead and zinc mines are closing down, unable to meet in our own domestic market the competition provided by Eurasian competitors. This raises the serious question of the time factor required to reopen these mines if necessity arose. In many cases the shafts would be flooded; engineers would have to be found, as would workmen. It is conceivable that the effort to reopen these mines for effective full-scale operation would take as much as 5 years. An example in another direction is mercury, in which we are said to be singularly deficient and on which we rely principally on Spain and Italy for our sources of supply. Our researches indicate that there is plenty of mercury on this continent but that the mines have never been developed since the American producer cannot compete with the great European cartels for our own markets. Attention may be called to many other materials, such as manganese. latter is known to be in plentiful supply in Brazil, though here again a time factor is involved, demanding the construction of roads, railroads, smeltering plants, etc., creating a strangling problem of delays under the high pressure bottleneck conditions which might apply in wartime. The In addition there must be considered the political conditions which might apply to the States in this continent, which create an unfavorable climate for quick availability of needed raw material resources in wartime. An illustration here might be Chile where much wrangling is going on with the Government over the price demanded, or Bolivia, where nationalization of the mines and deep suspicion of the United States, do not offer favorable conditions for the swift replacement of our tin supplies should we be cut off from our present sources-southeast Asia. A number of studies have been made seeking to develop and clarify the rawmaterial pattern as it would exist under critical or wartime conditions, and attempting to relate this pattern to our military goals and the needs of our industrial establishment. These investigations have operated from the viewpoint of legal access as guaranteed by treaty relationships with friendly foreign states. There is a tendency to assume somehow that such de jure access confers a guaranty of continued availability even under the special conditions created by war. Our experience in the last war, especially after the Japanese invasion of the South Pacific, teaches us how dangerous and fallacious such an assumption might be. Yet it is on exactly such an assumption that the present strategic policy of the United States is largely based. It is this concept which provides much of the reason for our continued support of the fiscal and strategic positions of certain foreign states, as well as for our actions in the more direct terms of immediate American interest. The existence of tungsten in Korea, for example, is assumed to be an important factor in our determination to hold the southern end of that peninsula. Similarly our relations with the Belgians are judged of such vital moment, due to Belgian possession of uranium sources in the African Congo, that support of Belgium's economy must be considered a fundamental of American policy. Such investigation as we have made indicates that there is probably more than sufficient uranium on this continent to supply all of our possible needs for many generations to come. In tungsten, a critical mineral of the greatest importance, practically all of which comes to us from distant foreign sources, it is probable that there is sufficient ore in the State of Nevada alone to fulfill all of our industrial requirements for the entire predictable future. We are confident that investigation will show that under conditions of proper encouragement and development, little exists in the long list of minerals and other materials in which we are reported to be so deficient as to rely utterly on foreign sources, which cannot be found in this hemisphere. The important exception at this moment seems to be chrome, for which we rely on Turkey for our supply. Others are corundum, an important abrasive, industrial diamonds from Africa, and graphite from India. Even here, inquiry and stimulated exploration may be expected to elicit alternate sources of supply in our own hemisphere. Certainly it would be a major advantage to our national security if the net list of critical raw materials imported from faraway places were brought down to the smallest possible number, allowing for a long-term stockpiling which would be hardly feasible where the have-not list extends widely in many directions. One of the major factors which must be considered in regard to our access to raw materials is the ability of our Defense Establishment to protect the produc ing areas in wartime. Careful evaluation of this matter with leading American military experts casts grave doubt on our capacity to do so. It is authoritatively believed that none of the peripheral areas bordering on the Russo-ChineseEurasian power sphere can be held by us under circumstances of all-out war. Some insight into the position may be gained from the United Nations adventure in Korea, where a full third of the American military forces has been engaged in a violent struggle with forces representing at most a third-rate extension of the Soviet power apparatus. A similar view may be gleaned in southeast Asia where the cream of the British and French armies have been struggling for years without marked success against local guerrilla contingents. No one doubts for a moment that were these guerrilla armies joined by the Chinese and Russians, the areas in question could not be held for more than a matter of days or weeks. The situation derives from one of the most important factors in modern war, the advantage of geographic space and position, as well as advantage in terms of available manpower. The Soviets control an area embracing practically the whole of central Eurasia, ideally situated strategically and containing almost 900 million people. Their central position in Eurasia guarantees the most highly effective lines of communication as compared with our own, which would be long, tenuous, and dangerously situated on the rim of the Soviet power wheel. The Soviets also would be more heavily armed in terms of existing armies, armor, and planes, than any forces the free world conceivably could bring to bear against them. Those with whom we have consulted, who in our opinion represent the most informed and ablest military minds on this continent, held forth no hope that the peripheral areas of Europe and Asia could be held against the first onslaught of massed Soviet power. In the event of all-out war we would be certain, therefore, to lose at once our access to all minerals and materials originating in these zones. An equally important consideration is the difficulty of transporting these materials across hostile seas. It will be remembered that during the last World War the Germans almost succeeded in severing our sea communications with our European allies and in this manner bringing the war to an expeditious end. In this reference it should be noted that the Germans at no time possessed more than 150 working submarines at the most effective period of their undersea campaign. Moreover, these submarines, as dangerous as they were, possessed many deficiencies as compared to new modern types. They were compelled to surface frequently, were slow and susceptible to the technique worked out by the British and American Navies for locating and destroying them. The Russians are reliably said to possess a fleet of some 350 of these undersea craft. Many of these are of the very newest types, built from the latest in German discovery and design. These submarines, not yet in being when the war ended, are equipped with snorkel breathing devices which enable them to submerge for weeks at a time, and causing the problem of location for our Navy hunter-killer teams to become acute. They are fast enough to outrun most surface carriers. Equally as important, they can fire their torpedoes well out of sonar range, adding immeasurably to their effectiveness as an attack instrument. Again, the military thinkers with whom we have consulted concede the grave possibility that our capacity to protect cargo and merchant carriers against these predatory killers in wartime leaves much open to doubt. Certainly one must accept the grim possibility that we will not be able to guarantee the safe movement of supply vessels between distant foreign ports and our own. These are considerations which must be applied not only to the import of strategic materials from southeast Asia but from Europe and Africa as well. They are compelled to change our concept of the wartime universe, and especially of the needs of our wartime industrial base. The preliminary examinations of the subcommittee provide distrurbing evidence of dangerous national misconceptions in regard to our raw material position. Our inquiries have also brought information leading to the possibility of effective corrective measures, principally related to the development of raw material self-sufficiency on the American continent. Whatever the facts may be, it is of the utmost importance that they be determined, and that they be related to an exact evaluation of the strategic realities, as well as our own raw material potential. It is considered that in conducting this investigation the committee will discharge an urgent and required duty and that its findings will be of the utmost importance in aiding those agencies of Government charged with formulating the military and foreign policies of our Nation, furnishing them with a body of factual and informative material, additional and supplementary to that derived from the usual official channels. It is intended to hold hearings on this subject, both public and executive as the situation requires, beginning in the third week of September and staff has already been chosen for this purpose. Sincerely, HUGH BUTLER, Chairman. An amended budget, in the amount of $37,500, offered by the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs to the resolution, and one approved by the Committee on Rules and Administration, is as follows: Hon. WILLIAM E. JENNER, UNITED STATES SENATE, Chairman, Rules and Administration Committee, Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C. July 22, 1953. DEAR SENATOR: Pursuant to your request of today, I am attaching herewith copies of the proposed budget of the committee to January 5, 1954, under Senate Resolution 143, submitted to the Rules and Administration Committee today, prorated to January 5, 1954. As covered by the resolution, our committee is seeking an appropriation of $50,000, for the purpose of continuing its study and investigation into the accessibility of critical raw materials to the United States under possible wartime conditions, with particular reference to this country and to the Western Hemisphere. It is intended to report to the Senate not later than January 3, 1955, on the results of this investigation to date and study, together with the recommendations of the committee. It will be noted that our total prorated budget up to January 5, 1954, will come to $37,500. During the months of preliminary study in which our background material has been assembled, the committee achieved certain economies in operation, which it expects to continue during the more difficult work of hearings and travel investigation. We have been materially assisted by the fact that we have had and will continue to have the full-time assistance of outstanding Americans who are willing to place their services at the disposal of the committee without salary or other recompense. This includes chief counsel, the general advisers, and the top executive adviser to the committee. In regard to the attached budget I wish to point out that 75 percent of our total expenditure is expected to be made during the next 5 months of our activity. Our travel budget and associated costs will be especially heavy since it may involve hearings in Denver, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, and other places where experts in the production of certain minerals are available, in order to get on-thespot estimates and the fullest benefits of expert testimony. In the period following, we expect to be able to dispense with much of the expert services and to reduce the balance of our staff. We will appreciate word from you at your earliest convenience, so that our committee may continue its activities as planned. Sincerely, X HUGH BUTLER, Chairman. |