|
|
|
|
America’s Peace Dividend, by Ann Markusen (ed.)
U.S. National Defense Policy in the Post-Cold War World
Lawrence J. Korb
Introduction
The defense policy of the United States, a decade after the Cold War, is primarily the result of three reviews conducted by the Pentagon: the Base Force of 1990; the Bottom Up Review of 1993; and the Quadrennial Defense Review of 1997. Although Congress has commissioned its own bipartisan reviews: the National Defense Panel (NDP) in 1996, and The Commission on National Security Strategy in 1998, these groups have had only a marginal impact on post-Cold War defense policy.
The Major Reviews
The first and most important review was called the Base Force. It was begun in late 1989 and unveiled to the Congress in January 1991. It was largely the work of JCS Chairman General Colin Powell and his Joint Staff. Powell, who had been President Reagan's last national security advisor before moving to the JCS, knew from that experience that the Soviet Union was on its last legs well before he became the nation's senior military officer. He believed that when the Soviet threat collapsed the rationale for a large standing U.S. military would be undercut. Powell feared there would be a stampede by members of Congress arguing that since there was no threat, there would be no need for a large military and since we did not need so many guns, we could start shifting large sums of money from defense to such things as schools or housing or crime prevention. In other words, he feared a large peace dividend.
Powell also knew that, without a Soviet threat, the U.S. military would have to be smaller. There would be very little support within the political system for a Cold War size military in a post- Cold War world, particularly in a Congress then controlled by Democrats most of whom had opposed the Reagan defense buildup. Powell feared that the Pentagon's political enemies would come after it with a chain saw if there was not an overarching strategy to guide the reductions. He was also aware that abstract concepts like "maintaining stability, preventing chaos in the international arena, or establishing a new world order" would not resonate politically as a justification for maintaining a significant military force in the post-cold War period. Finally, Powell did not wish to see the U.S. military diverted into such non-military tasks as peacekeeping and nation building. In his view, and that of his colleagues, the U.S. military exists to deter potential adversaries and to fight and win the nation's wars. General Powell did not want the U.S. Army to become the Salvation Army.
Therefore, upon taking office and before the collapse of the Soviet Union in the fall of 1989, Powell began planning for what he called the post-Cold War "Base Force." Powell's action was a reversal of the normal procedure in the executive branch. Usually the Secretary of Defense and his staff or the National Security Advisor and his staff would develop the policy and strategy and leave it to the military to execute it. Unlike Powell, his civilian bosses, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, did not believe the collapse of the Soviet Union was imminent in 1989, or 1990. In fact, even after the fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989, Cheney had recommended that the U.S. military budget be cut by only 10 percent over the 1990 - 95 period.
General Powell's Base force envisioned a military about 75 percent of the size and cost of the military that existed when he took office. According to the timetable Powell presented to his superiors, the Pentagon would reduce its force structure and budget by five percent a year each year in real terms between 1990 and 1995. By 1995, Powell's plan would have reduced the Total Force of uniformed military personnel from 3.3 million (2.1 million active and 1.2 million guard and reserve) to 2.6 million (1.6 million active and 0.9 million guard and reserve). The Base Force reductions in personnel would result in parallel cuts in the number of ground divisions, ships and tactical air wings. However the essentials of the U.S. military would remain the same only somewhat smaller, i.e. the forces would be organized and operated in the same way.
The Base Force represented a change in the way the U.S. rationalized its force structure. In the post-Cold War world, with no Soviet military threat, the U.S. would shift from a threat based force to a threat and capability based force. According to Powell, while the U.S. military might no longer have a specific airlift requirement to move millions of tons of supplies and equipment to Europe to deal with a massive Soviet and Warsaw Pact invasion, the U.S. military still needed the capability to move large amounts of material to several places around the world. Similarly, while the U.S. might no longer face the Red Army in the Fulda Gap in Germany, the nation needed to be able to project power other places around the globe.
Powell's Base Force needed to be capable of performing four basic missions: first, it needed to be able to fight across the Atlantic; second, it needed to be capable of fighting across the Pacific; third, it needed to have a contingency force in the U.S. that could be deployed rapidly to hot spots, as we did in Panama in 1989; and finally, it needed to possess a nuclear force of sufficient size to deter our nuclear adversaries.
Powell dealt with the issue of a specific enemy by arguing that his Base Force military needed to be capable of waging war by itself, i.e. without allies, against what later became known as the rogue or outlaw states. According to Powell, the threat from the Soviet Union had been replaced by something quite different, viz. demons and dangers of a regional nature against whom the U.S. Armed Forces might have to go and fight now.
Rogue states are hostile third world states with comparatively large military forces and robust weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities. According to those who characterize them as rogues or outlaws, these states harbor aggressive intentions against their less powerful neighbors, oppose the spread of democracy and are guilty of circumventing international norms against nuclear, biological and chemical proliferation. The Chairman of the JCS identified six rogue states which, in his view, posed a military threat to U.S. interests: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba and North Korea. Powell argued that U.S. forces could not be sized to defeat just one of the rogues, because that might tempt another potential aggressor, or outlaw state, to take advantage of a situation when all U.S. forces were committed against one. For example, if all U.S. forces were committed to a war in the Persian Gulf against Iran or Iraq, North Korea might believe the U.S. could not respond with sufficient force in a timely manner if it attempted to cross the 38th parallel. Therefore, Powell complemented his rogue doctrine with the two war strategy. i.e. the U.S. military should be structured to handle two major regional conflicts (MRC) simultaneously. Finally, the U.S. had to assume that its allies would not automatically come to the aid of the U.S. in the Persian Gulf or the Korean Peninsula. Accordingly Powell felt that the U.S. would need a force of 11 ground divisions, 10 tactical air wings, and some six aircraft carriers or about 400,000 troops in each theater. In Powell's view, it was the Rogue doctrine, the MRC Strategy without allied support that justified a force that was about 75 percent the size and structure of the military maintained during the Cold War.
The Base Force reductions also resulted in some reductions in the area of conventional weapons modernization. The Pentagon terminated or reduced the production of some current generation systems (AH-64, F-16, SSN-21, V-22). Military leaders felt that with the reductions in force structure, current stockpiles of most major categories would be more than adequate. However, the Base Force gave high priority to the development and production of several next generation systems (Commanche, F-22, F/A - 18 E/F, CVN-72, and DDG-51).
This approach to modernization put the Pentagon into an arms race with itself and was bound to cause problems by the second half of the 1990's. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was no real need for next generation systems like the F-22 or new attack submarines. Moreover, since these new systems would be so expensive, the Pentagon could not replace existing systems on a one for one, or even one to two basis within a procurement budget 25 percent below the Cold War average.
The Base Force also gave high priority to maintaining the readiness of the remaining force structure at Cold War levels. Since it was clear that the conventional forces would not have to face on very short notice a sophisticated peer competitor like the Soviet Union, this seemed like a needlessly expensive extravagance. And indeed it was. It required spending an increasing amount of operations and maintenance funding (O&M) per capita all throughout the 1990’s. By the end of the decade of the 1990’s O&M spending per active duty troop had risen by 40 percent in real terms.
Powell also had strong ideas about the circumstances in which U.S. military forces should be committed. The Chairman argued that the U.S. military should be sent into battle only when three conditions were met: first, our political objectives were clear and measurable; second, the country was prepared to use overwhelming force quickly and decisively to advance that objective; and third, military forces would be withdrawn when that objective was accomplished, that is, the political leaders have an exit strategy. Powell and his military colleagues did not wish to see the U.S. military become involved in more Vietnams (1960 - 1972) or Lebanon's (1982 - 1983) where the objectives were not clear and the military fought, in the Chief's view, with "one hand tied behind its back." This approach to the use of military force became known as the Powell Doctrine.
For three reasons the Bush Administration accepted, uncritically, the rationale of the Base Force as well as the force structure, modernization plans, and readiness criteria proposed by Powell. First, many members of Bush's national security team did not even want to offer up a 25 percent reduction in defense spending. As noted above, Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, wanted to reduce the defense budget by only 10 percent over the 1990-95 period and actually reprimanded Powell for publicly revealing the Base Force concept in the Spring of 1990. Second, the Bush Administration did not want to become involved in peacekeeping operations around the globe. It never sent forces to Bosnia and only agreed to what it thought was a limited involvement in Somalia. Third, the President assumed he would have a second term for him and his team to develop their own defense strategy. Bush's first, and only, term was dominated by the Persian Gulf War and its aftermath.
One of the severest critics of the Base Force approach was Les Aspin (D-WI), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee during the Bush Administration. He criticized the Powell-Cheney-Bush proposal to downsize the Pentagon as a top down review or defense policy by subtraction and as a response to the Pentagon's organizational needs rather than the real threats to U.S. interests. Aspen argued that a real "bottom up-review" was needed if America was to get the peace dividend it earned from spending $10 trillion to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the Soviet Union. He presented options that could have saved as much as $231 billion over the FY 1993-1997 period.
Candidate Bill Clinton endorsed the Aspin approach, and President Clinton, the candidate of change, appointed Aspin to be Secretary of Defense in order to change the Pentagon by conducting a real Bottom Up Review (BUR.) Aspin and his Deputy and eventual successor, William Perry, did indeed carry out the BUR. Despite their best efforts, it was a bottom up review in name only. The Aspin-Perry review resulted in a military hardly changed from the Base Force. This was not surprising given the fact that General Powell remained as Chairman and resisted any major changes, that Aspin did not have a full team of appointees in place during the review, and that the President did not want any more battles with the Chiefs after losing so badly on his attempt to eliminate the ban on homosexuals in the military.
In the BUR, the two war strategy was sanctified and the services protected their vital interests. The Navy got to maintain the 12 carrier battle groups it needed during the Cold War. The Air Force did give up some 200 tactical fighters but gained an equal number of strategic bombers for tactical use. The active Army did give up two ground divisions but the Army National Guard and Army reserve were maintained at Cold War levels and the Marines actually added a division.
Maintaining Cold War levels of readiness was given a top priority. Relics of the Cold War like the SSN-21 Seawolf Submarine, Trident II missiles, the F-22 fighter and the Milstar Communications System survived the review even though the Soviet threat which brought about their development had gone away. In addition the Clinton Administration resurrected the $40 billion, V-22 Osprey, which the Bush Administration had canceled.
There were some changes but they were minor. Military manpower was cut by another five percent. Projected levels of defense spending over the FY 1994-98 period were reduced by nine percent on the assumption that reform of the acquisition system would save substantial funds.
The Bottom Up Review pleased neither conservatives nor liberals. Conservatives argued that the reduction that Clinton made in the Bush plan, which amounted to $127 billion, or nine percent over the FY 1994-1998 period, made it impossible to carry out the two war strategy. In addition these defense hawks were unhappy with the fact that the Powell Doctrine was replaced by a Clinton Doctrine and the military began to be diverted into "operations other than war," or small scale contingencies, in places like Haiti and Bosnia. Opponents of the Clinton Doctrine argued that these peacekeeping missions were not only inappropriate but they made it even more difficult to execute the two war strategy. Liberals, on the other hand, were unhappy that Clinton made such a comparatively small reduction in Bush's program. Their unhappiness was compounded when Clinton himself added back some of the funds he had cut and then agreed to additions the Republican Congress made to his proposals. By the end of his first term, about $100 of the $127 billion in cuts were restored by Clinton or by the Congress with Clinton's assent. And over the FY 1994-99 period Clinton actually spend more on defense than Bush had projected. In order to deal with this situation, Congress mandated that the Pentagon do another review, a Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and the legislature set up an independent panel, the National Defense Panel (NDP) to review the QDR. As might be expected the QDR and NDP came up with different conclusions. But most important, neither dealt with the central policy issues bedeviling the Pentagon and the country. First, the QDR, like the Base Force and the BUR, reaffirmed the two war scenario, thus leaving in place the force structure, the modernization strategy, and readiness emphasis of the two previous reviews. Perry's successor, William Cohen, was no more willing than Perry, Aspin, or Clinton to take on the vested interests in the Pentagon. The QDR postulated that the U.S. military needs to be able to "respond" to two Desert Storm-like regional conflicts at the same time. Second, the U.S. needed to continue to "shape" the international environment by continuing to maintain over 200,000 troops forward deployed to Europe and Asia and providing forces for small scale contingencies like Bosnia and Haiti. Third, the U.S. should continue to maintain 7,000 strategic nuclear weapons until Start II is ratified by the Russian Duma and then drop that number to 3,500. Finally, the U.S. should "prepare" for an uncertain future by continuing to modernize U.S. weapons systems across the board and deploying a national missile defense system as soon as technologically feasible.The QDR did propose some marginal across the board reductions in personnel and weaponry. It set a goal of reducing active duty manpower by 60,000 or four percent, civilian employees by 80,000 or 11 percent, and reserve personnel by 6 percent. The QDR also proposed reductions of about 25 percent in the planned buys of the F-22, the F/A - 18 E/F and the V-22 tilt rotor Osprey. As of the end of 1999 many of these goals had not yet been achieved. For example, the reserves still had 25,000 more personnel than the QDR goal.
Table I summarizes the three policy reviews conducted by the Pentagon during the past decade. As indicated in that table, active duty manpower has been reduced by 770,000 or 36 percent and reserve manpower by 335,000 or 29 percent. What is more interesting and significant is that the reductions in Army, Navy, and Air Force active manpower are almost exactly the same: 36, 37, and 37 respectively. And that the service shares of the budget remained the same throughout the decade (Army 25%, Navy 31%, and Air Force 25%).
The NDP, which was unveiled in December, 1997, did make some useful criticisms of the QDR. First, the panel pointed out that the two war concept is not only obsolete but is primarily a device for justifying a Cold War lite force structure. (This conclusion was seconded by the National Security Strategy Group in its preliminary report in the Spring of 2000.) Second, the NDP argued the Pentagon is still spending too much money on yesterday's weapons like the M1A1 Abrams battle tanks and Nimitz class carriers. Third, the NDP criticized the Pentagon for not making ground units more mobile, and failing to exploit fully unmanned aerial vehicles and other such reconnaissance communications systems. Fourth, it recommended that DOD add $5 to $10 billion in annual funding to support new initiatives in intelligence, space, urban warfare, joint experimentation, and information operations in order to transform itself into a 21st century force.
However, when the JCS opposed the recommendations of the NDP, Secretary of Defense Cohen refused to support them. Rather, Cohen supported the JCS in the Fall of 1998, when they asked the President and Congress for more funds. Although the Chiefs did not receive the full $150 billion they sought from President Clinton, over the FY 2000 - 05 period, the President gave them $112 billion and Congress added an additional $5 billion in FY 2000 alone.
Conclusion
The force of 2000 is structurally little different from the force that existed a decade ago. As Elliot Cohen has noted, the troops drive the same tanks, fly the same fighter aircraft and sail the same ships, and are organized and operated the same way. The fact that the defense force of 2000 is essentially a smaller or shrunken version of the Reagan era Cold War force or that the budget shares of the three military departments remained unchanged should not be surprising. The Pentagon is a very difficult organization to change radically, and the JCS are very skillful bureaucratic infighters. Moreover, General Powell was probably the most influential military officer since World War II giants like Eisenhower and MacArthur; President Clinton, because of his lack of foreign policy experience and his draft history, is the least likely President to bring about real change in the Pentagon. Nonetheless, by the turn of the century the Pentagon and the nation were in the worst of all possible worlds. By any reasonable comparison or historical standard, the level of defense spending, which was over 90 percent of the Cold War average, was quite high and yet the Pentagon budget was judged by the military, most politicians, and much of the public as woefully inadequate. For example, an analysis done by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in early 2000 argued that there would be a "train wreck" in defense unless $500 billion were added to the $1.6 trillion already allocated to the Pentagon over the FY 2001-05 period. Moreover, both major presidential candidates pledged to increase defense spending if elected.
A more cost effective defense policy could easily be developed if the political leaders were willing to take on the vested interests in the Pentagon. This policy would have the following elements:
Email this citation