TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/090792/09079922.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 14.0 KB | 291 lines

                                                                                DEFENSE, Page 26

A Force For the Future


The U.S. won the cold war and faces no serious foreign adversary.
So why are Bush and Clinton seeking only marginal cuts in a
Pentagon budget that will still top $1 trillion over five years?
Instead, why not start from the bottom and tailor America's
military to its true mission -- and bring home a real peace
dividend?

By BRUCE W. NELAN -- Reported by Bruce van Voorst/Washington


     The world's only superpower. Following the collapse of the
Soviet Union, the U.S. can lay claim to that title. And the Bush
Administration, like the Pentagon's professional warriors, aims
to keep it. "We need to speak up for the military muscle that
gives meaning to America's moral leadership," the President told
the American Legion in Chicago last week. On this front,
challenger Bill Clinton is in full agreement, promising to be
"a resolute leader who will wield America's might and marshal
our global alliances to defend our nation's interests.''

     Considering their clashing views on other subjects, the
two candidates are surprisingly similar in their military
policies. While Bush plans to reduce the armed forces from 2.1
million in uniform in 1990 to 1.6 million, Clinton aims at 1.4
million. Clinton said last week that his projected five-year
defense budget would total $1.36 trillion (that's right,
trillion!), as opposed to Bush's $1.42 trillion -- "a
difference," boasted Clinton, "of only 5% over five years."

     Compared with the Pentagon's gargantuan overall budget,
that hardly amounts to a dime's worth of difference. Neither
candidate devotes much public attention to military issues;
neither has been heard to utter the phrase "peace dividend" in
campaign speeches. And with good reason. In this
recession-blighted election year, cutting troop levels and
slashing Pentagon budgets can mean higher unemployment. The
formerly onerous burden of military spending now looks to
presidential -- and congressional -- aspirants very much like
a jobs-and-votes program. Clinton hews closely to the
Administration line on defense for other reasons as well: to
pre-empt Republican charges that Democrats are soft on national
security and to take the heat out of accusations that he dodged
the draft during the Vietnam War.

     Such short-term political calculations, however, do not
serve the national interest. The U.S. may have won the cold war,
but its economy and society sustained massive battle damage in
the process. Over the past 40 years, $5 trillion that might
have been invested in education, public health, housing,
highways and other domestic needs instead had to be spent on the
armed forces. Yet American security is at least as dependent on
a prosperous economy and an educated, healthy population as it
is on military strength.

     Even the Pentagon concedes that reductions in defense
spending are inevitable. Despite these cuts, Bush's projected
budget for 1997 calls for spending $242 billion, only 15% below
the average during the peacetime cold war. George Bush insists
that cuts beyond that would endanger national security.

     Security against what? The stunning fact is that the U.S.
today faces no direct threat from any direction. If the Soviet
nuclear menace is neutralized and no hostile country threatens
the borders of the U.S., why is the Administration calling for
an average annual savings of a mere $23 billion? Why are both
Bush and Clinton planning to spend more than $1 trillion on
defense over the next five years?

     Part of the answer is that neither candidate has been
willing to start thinking about the military budget from
scratch, to assess what America's defense requirements will be
in a new world order and from there determine what force levels
and structure would best meet those needs. Because both are
reluctant to dismantle the world's greatest fighting machine,
they are trying to calculate how much they will be obliged to
cut rather than how much defense the nation really needs. Yet
generations of military thinkers have agreed that the best way
to find out what kind of defense the country should have is to
decide first on a national strategy. The strategy the U.S. needs
has changed radically over the past three years, with the
dissipation of the Warsaw Pact and then the Soviet Union, and
that in turn could radically change the kind of military
structure that is necessary.

     The primary mission of armed forces is to safeguard a
nation's territory. The U.S. today is virtually invulnerable to
land or sea invasion. Aside from the former Soviet Union, only
China has a handful of missiles that could hit America. And as
the four-decade U.S.-Soviet face-off demonstrated, nuclear
deterrence is the best defense against nuclear attack.

     A second major purpose of military power is to advance a
country's interests abroad. "Threats come in many flavors," says
Michael Rich, vice president for national security research at
the Rand Corp., "and we don't have to wait for a threat before
we protect our interests." Assertive military actions in the
national interest will continue to include supporting American
allies by deploying troops and fleets abroad, guarding access
to foreign trade and resources (especially oil), trying to
influence regional events and intimidating would-be aggressors.

     A corollary of the new reality is that America is now free
to decide for itself what interests it considers vital enough
to shed blood for. And even if it misreads risks and stumbles
into some crises, its mistakes are no longer likely to lead to
a nuclear Armageddon.

     Some American leaders believe the large, flexible and
dominating forces the U.S. now commands are essential to
retaining superpower status. Says General Colin Powell, Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "I want to be the biggest bully
on the block." Large, highly capable forces are likely to make
aggressors think twice about risking a fight with the U.S. And
if a fight does break out, overwhelming American power might end
it quickly and keep casualties low.

     Today only six states in the world are overtly hostile to
the U.S.: Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea and Syria. Of
these, Iraq boasted by far the largest armed forces at the time
of the Kuwait invasion. Driving the Iraqis out of Kuwait
required 427,000 U.S. fighters, or 22% of the Pentagon's
uniformed personnel at that time. None of the five other hostile
states comes close to matching Iraq's pre-1991 strength on the
ground or in the air. Moreover, the U.S. would almost certainly
have allies in future combat against any would-be aggressor:
South Korea in East Asia, Israel or friendly Arab states in the
Middle East, NATO and possibly a U.N. force. Thus the U.S., even
with a substantially scaled-down military, would be ready for
any conflict that can realistically be expected -- not to
mention such smaller tasks as combatting terrorism and the drug
trade.

     In Washington the leading civilian exponent of this kind
of analysis is Congressman Les Aspin, chairman of the House
Armed Services Committee. Aspin and his staff have been studying
a zero-base, bottom-up estimate of the kinds of forces the U.S.
needs to respond to post-cold war threats. "To understand that
regional aggressors are the most demanding threat we will
face," Aspin says, "does not help determine how much force would
be required to meet these threats." He suggests a measurement
he calls the Desert Storm Equivalent, a standard based on the
military units that actually fought in Iraq, plus a few
improvements.

     Using this kind of back-to-basics approach, based on
consultations with a broad range of military experts, TIME has
traced a blueprint of the size and shape of the military force
that would meet American needs from now into the next century.
Its mission: to be able to fight one war on the scale of Desert
Storm and still have enough resources to assist U.S. allies if
conflict were to erupt simultaneously in Korea or Europe. For
that, the U.S. must retain its stabilizing presence in Asia and
Europe. That means leaving the existing 95,000 troops in place
in Korea and Japan and keeping 100,000 in the NATO countries
(where there are currently 230,000). Washington will also have
to build transport ships and planes to make its forces more
mobile. But those requirements leave plenty of room for budget
trimming. Here are the outlines of TIME's plan, with cost
estimates provided by the independent Washington-based Defense
Budget Project:



     NAVY. The Pentagon could reduce the number of warships. It
is still planning for 451 surface ships, a fleet too big and
expensive for a world without a Soviet navy. It counts on 14
aircraft carrier battle groups, which cost about $20 billion
each to build and equip. But six carriers were clearly excessive
in the Persian Gulf War, which proved land-based bombers and
unmanned cruise missiles could carry out many missions now
assigned to ship-based strike planes.

     By TIME's calculations, the Navy would be able to carry
out its reduced duties with a battle force of 235 ships,
including six aircraft carriers and 10 strategic missile
submarines (current Pentagon plans call for 24 subs). The Marine
Corps could be reduced from three active divisions to two,
totaling 132,000 combat-ready troops, and one reserve division.
The Defense Budget Project estimates that these cuts, if
implemented over the next few years, would bring down the cost
of Navy and Marine operations to $56 billion a year, compared
with $87 billion in the present Pentagon budget.



     AIR FORCE. Though the Gulf War demonstrated that modern
air power can win wars, this high-tech service will also have
to cut back. It is being forced to scale down its ambitious
plans for the B-2 Stealth bomber and settle for the 20 planes
currently programmed, probably excessively, at a staggering $2.3
billion apiece rather than the 132 that the service originally
wanted. Similarly, the Air Force will have to face reality on
its warplane of the future, the F-22: the Pentagon's request to
buy 648 of them for as much as $95 billion beginning in 1995
seems out of the question. While maintaining a 117-plane
strategic bomber fleet essential for delivering heavy bomb loads
and air-launched cruise missiles over intercontinental
distances, the Air Force could be reduced to 10 active and five
reserve tactical fighter wings, totaling 1,500 planes, and 300
large transport planes. TIME's estimated future cost: $65
billion, compared with $83 billion currently.



     ARMY. Standing at 18 combat divisions at the time of
Desert Storm, the Army could be brought down to 10 active and
five reserve divisions, totaling 797,000 troops. Its divisions,
fully equipped with the world's finest tanks, armored personnel
carriers and helicopters, are already superior to any other land
force. Maintaining the army at these lower levels would cost $45
billion a year, against the present $71 billion.



     The defense budget is not limited to personnel and
equipment expenditures. Among the additional outlays are
research and development, training, maintaining the strategic
nuclear arsenal, and the military costs incurred by the
departments of Energy and Transportation as well as by other
federal agencies. Taking all this into account, the annual
budget for this hypothetical post-cold war force would be $195
billion. That is $86 billion less than the $281 billion the Bush
Administration requested for fiscal 1993. Of course, it would
take several years to bring the U.S. military down to these
proposed levels. Moreover, TIME's projected costs would have to
increase near the end of this decade, when new generations of
technology -- especially tactical aircraft -- will have to
replace aging equipment. If new threats were to emerge, or old
threats reappear, the U.S. could tailor its military to the
changed situation.

     "Defense planning," says former Secretary of Defense James
Schlesinger, "is an art, not a science." TIME's blueprint for
peacetime armed forces is certainly not the only feasible plan,
but it is based on the most rational and pragmatic method for
designing a post-cold war military: 1) devise a strategy, 2)
decide the kinds and numbers of forces needed to carry it out,
and 3) determine the cost.

     Unfortunately, that is not the way military planning
actually is being done by either the Administration or its
challengers. For Bush, as for Clinton and most members of
Congress, the prospect of lost jobs, closed bases and canceled
contracts makes it politically risky to propose the really
substantial changes that are needed -- especially with
unemployment running in excess of 7%.

     On the contrary, the temptation to use the Pentagon as a
source of pork-barrel largesse remains as strong as ever.
Witness the Connecticut congressional delegation's campaign to
force the Administration to build two totally unnecessary
nuclear-powered Seawolf submarines, at $3 billion each, which
the Pentagon wants to cancel. Clinton unblushingly supports the
Seawolf, along with another hyperexpensive program that the
Pentagon wants to kill: the vertical takeoff V-22 Osprey,
costing $40 million each. For his part, Democratic
vice-presidential candidate Al Gore wants to keep open the
assembly line for M1-A1 tanks, which Defense Secretary Dick
Cheney announced plans for closing two years ago.

     For all the talk of cuts and savings, the defense budget
process is likely to trim less than $10 billion from the $281
billion Bush requested for fiscal 1993. Though defense
contractors are groaning, they will continue to do $140 billion
a year in business for the near future as the U.S. spends more
on its armed forces than all its European allies combined.
Unfortunately, military spending today has more to do with what
politicians believe will win votes than what the nation really
needs to protect its vital interests.