Tough Choices on Defense : Cuts in Waste, Realistic Commitments Lie Ahead as Issues

Just how much money is enough for the nation’s defense? The answer depends on your view of the world and of the role of military power in maintaining peace and protecting U.S. interests and democratic values. It also depends on the political popularity of other, non-military, demands on the Treasury’s piggy bank.

From where military planners sit, the defense budget is never large enough. But if the world was really as benign a place as many Pentagon critics seem to think, we wouldn’t need a military establishment at all. Public and congressional perceptions as to the appropriate balance have varied wildly over the years.

President Reagan’s proposed new defense budget is $312 billion--a 3% increase after inflation over the amount approved by Congress last year. That’s a tall pile of money no matter how you count it, and there is little question that most members of the Democratic-run 100th Congress are in a mood to cut it.

It’s worth noting, however, that Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) of the Senate Armed Services Committee has pointedly refrained from joining them.

Nunn is the most knowledgeable and influential Democrat on military issues on Capitol Hill. He is also a possible contender for the presidency in 1988.

The Georgian recognizes that the defense budget cannot be sacrosanct in an era of huge federal budget deficits. But in a recent television interview he made it clear that he finds more fault with how the Pentagon proposes to spend the money than with the bottom-line total.

“I think the President and secretary of defense have presented a legitimate defense budget this year,” he said. “It will be taken seriously by our committee.”

It will be interesting to see whether Nunn’s calm, nonpartisan approach prevails with his fellow Democrats.

A little perspective is in order.

Defense budgets during the last years of the Eisenhower Administration, well after the Korean War ended, averaged close to 10% of gross national product. The figure was still over 7% in 1965, before the massive U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

In the post-Vietnam atmosphere, military spending steadily declined until, in 1979, it bottomed out below 5% of GNP. During the late 1970s, however, the impression grew both at home and abroad that the pendulum had swung too far, that America was projecting an image of weakness that was tempting the Soviets to do things like invade Afghanistan and use surrogate Cuban troops to promote Marxist governments in Africa.

Reagan entered office promising to restore a favorable U.S.-Soviet balance of power. Congress, reading the election returns, voted double-digit increases in military spending for the first couple of years, and imposed only modest restraint for a time thereafter.

Even so, it is important to understand that military spending during the Reagan Administration has never gone much over 6% of GNP--a respectably low level, by historical standards.

Under the effect of a frightening budget deficit and horror stories about waste in defense procurement, public enthusiasm for military spending has waned. In the last two years Congress hacked about $50 billion from his defense-budget requests in order to allow much smaller cuts in domestic spending programs.

This year the Administration finally bowed to political reality. The new budget request is $8 billion less than what the Pentagon wanted last year, and is actually smaller than the request for fiscal 1985.

Many congressional Democrats are talking in terms of cutting the defense budget back to zero growth in real, inflation-adjusted terms, or perhaps even lower. It may happen, but no one should imagine that there won’t be real consequences. Each services would have to choose between investment in new weapons and readiness for combat with the weapons that it already has.

Either way, the power and effectiveness of the U.S. armed forces would unavoidably deteriorate over time--especially if the Pentagon isn’t forced to make the kind of choices that Nunn insists it should make.

The Pentagon, as of now, proposes merely to stretch out weapons programs instead of making the hard decisions to eliminate some in order to afford economic rates of production on others.

To quote Nunn: “We’ve got too many weapons systems being produced, and we’re not producing any of . . . them at efficient rates. When you take all the coffee-pot scandals and all the hammers and all those things we read about and multiply them by 10,000, you don’t have the kind of waste in dollars that you do when you stretch too many weapons systems . . . . That’s where the real waste and fat is.”

Obvious candidates for budget cuts include the two new carriers proposed by the Navy, as well as the proposed acceleration in the “Star Wars” missile defense program and the idea of building 50 additional MX missiles for deployment on railroad cars.

Another matter for concern is the mismatch between resources available to the military services and the global commitments that they are expected to enforce.

Former national-security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, testifying before Nunn’s committee the other day, proposed that 100,000 U.S. troops be gradually withdrawn from Europe in order to make funds available for a significant expansion of U.S. airlift capability.

Nunn hasn’t gone that far. But, as he noted the other day, “History has clearly demonstrated that an effective strategy has been based on a calculated relationship between ends and means. A nation whose publicly declared goals far exceed its capabilities is in a high-risk posture.”

The President’s ears should turn bright red at such talk. He is the real granddaddy of the mismatch between resources and commitments, having insisted for six years on an ever-rising defense budget in lock step with tax cuts. In short, he demands a grade triple-A defense but encourages the American people to think that they don’t have to pay for it.

The public rhetoric of most congressional Democrats is almost as bad. Any member who suggests that higher taxes may be in order is hooted down. It’s easier to pretend that all things are possible, if only we take a meat ax to the defense budget.

Nunn doesn’t agree--which probably means that he is much too solid a fellow to be a serious presidential candidate.