Defense

By BRUCE W. NELAN

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?

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.

With reporting by Bruce van Voorst/Washington