A Strategic Study Worth Another Look

The traditional fate of studies by blue-ribbon presidential commissions is to be published, debated pro and con for a season--then gradually forgotten.

That may happen to the report issued earlier this month by the Commission on Long-Term Strategy, which was appointed by the Reagan Administration 15 months ago to divine what combination of weapons and policies are needed to see us safely through the next 20 years.

Certainly a report issued in the waning months of a lame-duck presidency has two strikes against it anyway.

However, the imposing makeup of the commission guarantees that its findings will come under serious discussion and debate within the Western defense community. Already, it has set off tremors in Western Europe and may galvanize efforts by Europeans to come up with a coherent, sensible strategy of their own.

The bipartisan commission headed by Fred C. Ikle, at the time undersecretary of defense, and veteran strategic analyst Albert Wohlstetter of Los Angeles, also included former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger; Carter Administration national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski; retired Gen. John W. Vessey, former chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, and several other luminaries. Their report was unanimous.

The commissioners see a continuing need for U.S. troops in Europe, the maintenance of nuclear forces capable of deterring Soviet aggression and the pursuit of policies to block Soviet expansion in the Third World.

In fundamental ways, however, the panel’s picture of changing global realities, and its prescriptions for dealing with them, are at sharp variance with the existing verities. For example:

--U.S. defense planners, says the report, should not be so preoccupied with “apocalyptic” dangers that are unlikely to occur--namely a Soviet invasion of Central Europe or an all-out nuclear attack--and plan more for the likelier prospect of conflict on the European periphery or in the Third World.

--In deterring the Soviets we should not rely on the threat of a full-scale nuclear exchange--a threat that, if carried out, would “provoke our own annihilation.”

Instead, says the commission, we should develop and maintain the capacity for “discriminate” response. That is, the ability to stop Soviet aggression utilizing conventional forces or limited nuclear attack without committing national suicide in the process.

--Current technology makes it possible to hit targets “at any range” with accuracies of three to 10 feet. Thus, while maintaining a nuclear deterrent of varying degrees of destructiveness will remain necessary, the commission says we should move toward substituting super-accurate conventional weapons for nukes, even for targets at intercontinental range.

Most striking of all is the warning that the United States faces a drastically different world environment in the years ahead.

The report suggests that for the foreseeable future, the Soviet Union will remain the most dangerous of potential adversaries. But Japan has already replaced the Soviet Union as the world’s second economic power behind the United States. By the year 2000, the panel believes that the Soviet Union--despite its economic reform efforts--may slip to fourth, behind China as well.

Japan clearly has the capacity to become a major military power. The commissioners believe that China may become one, too. As the report dryly observes, a world with three or four major military powers would be “far more complicated” than the familiar U.S.-Soviet equation.

Making matters worse, several lesser powers can be expected to have sizable arsenals including chemical weapons, short-range or even medium-range missiles--and, in some cases, nuclear weapons.

The commission concludes that highly mobile, versatile military forces are needed to cope with serious challenges to U.S. interests around the world. But this country is handicapped by increasing problems of overseas bases--witness the anti-base agitation currently at work in Spain, Greece and the Philippines, and the reluctance of the Saudi Arabians to grant landing rights for U.S. helicopters operating in the Persian Gulf.

The study’s major defect is its failure to deal seriously with the economic underpinnings of national security.

After all, fundamental tenets of U.S. foreign policy and military planning go back 30 or 40 years--to an era when America had overwhelming nuclear superiority and the economic strength to back up the role of world policeman that was forced upon it after World War II.

Today the Soviet Union has equal if not superior nuclear forces, and the United States is in deep economic trouble. There is a great and growing disparity between our aims and the resources available to carry them out. And there is a crying need for our prosperous allies to assume more of the burden, not just for defending their home territories but protecting Western interests in the Third World as well.

Yet the commission makes only passing reference to this reality. It does not acknowledge the possibility that the United States may simply have to shrink American commitments and military forces to fit the resources available. And there is no discussion of the possibility that too much emphasis on military research and development could, by keeping technological manpower and resources diverted from the civilian economy, actually damage this country’s long-term ability to defend its interests.

What’s needed now is an equally serious and high-level study integrating national security strategy with the economic realities faced by these United States.