A Military Strategy That Doesn’t Add Up

The Clinton administration’s new review of defense policy outlines a military strategy and structure for the first decades of the 21st century that is disappointingly similar to the policy it is following in the last decade of the 20th century.

The review continues the pretense that the United States has the ability to fight two major regional conflicts “nearly simultaneously.” It reduces the armed forces and reserves slightly while maintaining defense spending at its current level. Despite the absence of any credible international competitor in the air, the policy proposes to move ahead with the procurement of three different advanced fighter jets, in smaller quantities than the services want but still at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.

What Defense Secretary William Cohen and his uniformed and civilian advisors have produced, in short, is not a bold attempt to reshape American military forces to meet post-Cold War realities, but a gussied-up version of the status quo. This is, as one critic says, “the no-pain, no-gain review.”

A key part of the strategic status quo is the dangerous fiction that the military is capable of fighting two big localized wars with the personnel and equipment it has or could quickly call upon, with the Korean peninsula and the Persian Gulf cited as the most likely battlegrounds.

The numbers simply don’t sustain that claim.

Since their last major conflict in 1991, the armed forces have shrunk by one-third and military spending has fallen by 24%. An Army that once sent seven divisions to fight Saddam Hussein can field only 10 divisions now; there is no way it could meet simultaneous commitments in two theaters. For all the technological progress made in intelligence gathering, precision weapons and battlefield communications--and more impressive advances loom--it still takes highly trained fighting forces backed by formidable logistics to defeat an enemy. Military downsizing, static budgets and an emphasis on spending heavily on weapons more suited to the Cold War era could one day leave the United States cripplingly short of what it needs to defend its vital interests.

The final word in military policy rests, as always, with Congress. Cohen, who served for 24 years on Capitol Hill, has challenged his former colleagues to spend tight defense dollars more wisely, in part by shutting down redundant bases and shrinking the politically popular National Guard. But Congress for now seems more interested in avoiding political headaches than in supporting and funding the kind of coherent long-term strategy needed to respond to evolving global challenges.