Presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore spent all of last week debating the state of the U.S. military. Both pledged to add to the defense budget. Both said they would raise military pay. Both promised to be judicious in the use of American force. Both failed to say anything meaningful about the state of the U.S. military.
Their debate over readiness quickly disintegrated into pettiness. Bush, a Republican, charged that Gore, a Democrat, had all but scuttled America’s military might during his seven years with the Clinton administration. Gore dubbed “Dubya’s” proposals evidence that Bush was not ready for prime time.
The debate also wholly avoided the most profound question faced by American armed forces since the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed: What is the U.S. military supposed to be doing now?
“Neither one of them has yet addressed the critical of issue of what they as president would want the military to do,” said Dan Smith of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information. “Until they answer that question, everything else is hot air.”
Bush and Gore raised legitimate, short-term concerns. The services are having trouble holding onto people because of the good economy. There have been shortages of spare parts. Training time on jets, ships and tanks has been reduced. Missions have increased. Morale has dropped.
But, in truth, the forces are more fit today after seven years of Bill Clinton than they were in 1985 at the peak of Ronald Reagan’s massive military buildup, according to Michael O’Hanlon, a military specialist at the Brookings Institution. Indicators such as “mission-capable rates” of aircraft and other equipment and the fitness of soldiers are all up, he said, though morale of the troops is lower now.
A Pentagon report released last week indicates that “most major combat and key support forces are ready” to fight.
But all of that, a mix of military experts said last week, means little. That’s all just politics. What America truly needs, they said, is a new policy for its post-Cold War military.
Since the end of the Cold War, the Defense Department has undergone two top-to-bottom reviews of its programs, policies, weapons and missions. Both reviews, not surprisingly given existing turf battles at the Pentagon, determined that the military should continue to look much as it always has, albeit a bit smaller.
The post-Cold War military strategy that grew out of those reviews calls for a military designed to fight two major regional wars–with Iraq and North Korea, for instance–nearly simultaneously, while remaining able to cope with smaller military emergencies. It’s a strategy that basically rationalizes much of the existing structure, training and weapon programs of the big, muscular force intended to fight in Europe and to deter a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.
It also is a strategy that was outdated before it was ever committed to paper.
The missions of the American military have changed dramatically since the end of the Cold War. Peacekeeping and humanitarian missions have become the norm. Rather than mobilizing a massive mixed force to a war zone, American military planners find themselves scrambling smaller units to a greater number of hot spots.
So the Pentagon’s insistence on the two-war scenario means that it is misdirecting billions of dollars to weapons and strategies that are of questionable future use.
The Air Force and Navy want to spend $350 billion on 3,500 short-range fighter jets at a time when military experts believe that the U.S. should be investing more in aircraft and missiles that can be launched from afar, where they are less vulnerable to counter-attack.
The Army is pushing ahead with a 110-ton mobile artillery piece called the Crusader even though experiences in places such as Bosnia and Kosovo showed that planes and missiles can accomplish the same missions from further off. Critics charge that the massive gun runs counter to the restructuring of the Army as a lighter, smaller and more agile force.
Some Cold War relics, such as the stealthy, $1 billion-a-copy B-2 bomber, are being modified so that they can be used in non-nuclear combat. But submarines, aircraft carriers and jets, whose suitability to future missions have been questioned, continue to absorb money while Congress kills funding for other, potentially more important weapons of the future, such as a space-based radar.
Michael Vickers, director of strategic studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, said that so far opportunities to remake the military in any meaningful way since the end of the Cold War have been sqaundered. “This past decade was wasted,” he said.
Though they don’t talk about it in any detail on the stump, both Bush and Gore said they are prepared to revisit the Pentagon’s current strategy once they take office. Yet, though it’s the issue that experts say should be the No. 1 concern of the new president, both Gore and Bush list “new military” as their No. 3 priority in their respective position papers. (Even without them, the Pentagon is preparing for its third comprehensive review in 2001.)
Gore pledge to “challenge the Pentagon and the services to go beyond justifying parochial viewpoints and existing programs to conduct a thorough examination of future requirements and capabilities.”
Bush said he would “respect the military’s tradition and culture, while changing its structure and encouraging a spirit of innovation.”
Neither has taken a definitive stance on the two-war strategy.
Gore appears to want it both ways. “America’s forces should remain capable of dealing with the major regional challenges they could face in the Gulf and Northeast Asia,” he has said. But any new review should “reevaluate requirements, priorities and resulting capabilities in light of the overall responsibilities assigned to our armed forces.”
Bush is focused mainly on reforming the way the Pentagon spends money. He would increase funding for research and development by at least $20 billion between 2002 and 2006. He also would set aside 20 percent of the $60 billion procurement budget for new technologies.
Doing so, Bush maintains, will encourage the military “to wildcat”–to try different methods and technologies to solve operational problems. Commanders, he said, would be judged “on how well they experiment to meet the new operational challenges envisioned in the future.”
Bush’s main military objective is the development and deployment of an anti-ballistic missile defense system that not only would protect America but its allies abroad. The system has so far proven unworkable, and critics charge that it would violate a crucial arms-control treaty and ignite a new arms war.
Bush has hinted at some changes he would like to see, but is vague about how to achieve them. For instance, he said smaller ships could be created to augment the Navy’s aircraft carriers, the single most expensive weapon system being built, though he did not say whether he would curtail the construction of carriers.
And he called the creation of a missile-laden ship known as the arsenal ship “a promising idea” even though military planners have already scrapped the boat. The low-lying ship was supposed to be nearly invisible to enemy radar but capable of firing hundreds of missiles at the enemy ashore. Pentagon officials canceled the ship before it ever got off the drawing board, saying that it was too vulnerable a target and that its mission could be fulfilled more effectively by submarines.
If the candidates are giving the military short shrift on the campaign stump, it may because they are heeding hints from voters. Public opinion polls show that defense spending is a low priority for most Americans–at least those with no connection to the military.
Still, said Smith of the Center for Defense Information, it would be reassuring to hear the candidates talk about the things that truly matter.
“The American people are quite capable of understanding and staying with a discussion of vital national security matters,” Smith said, “if only someone would start one.”
