PERSPECTIVE ON THE DEFENSE BUDGET : Forces for a Nation Among Nations : To realize the maximu post-Cold War peace dividend. America will have to kick its global power habits.

The situation of the United States in the world a year after the termination of a major global conflict is rather like that of 1920 (but unlike that of 1946) in one sense: We are many years away from the emergence of a new hostile constellation of power. Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s concession of a united Germany’s membership in NATO is the latest evidence of this. And unlike the situation of both 1920 and 1946, the international system may not, for a very long time, take a structural “shape” that could be construed as directly threatening to the United States.

True, the impending international system will be characterized by disturbances, mostly non-strategic ones such as resource denials, restrictions of trade, environmental damage, population pressures, excessive migration, narcotics and fanatic terrorism. Indeed, such events are often substituted by participants in the new defense debate for the more definable challenges once posed by Soviet military power. But these specific disorders--even narcotics and terrorism--are, on the scale of grand strategy, nuisances, not even susceptible to national military measures. In short, this will be a nasty though not terminal situation.

Over the half-century of Cold War, we have been faced with putative requirements pressing upward against what fiscal constraints would allow. Now, fiscal constraints continue to press down, with federal budgets that would be running $200 billion a year in deficit (when all items are counted), unless they were brought down by heroic cost-cutting, driven by the specter of Gramm-Rudman, or shaved by grudging “revenue enhancement.” But the external strategic requirements have fallen anyway.

And now we have the peculiar problem of sizing our military forces in an era of challenges not susceptible to military solutions and violence not necessarily directed against us. But the irrelevance of explicit defense planning does not mean that our national security program should be randomly cut or crassly bureaucratically shaped. There should be some points of reference and some criteria of appropriateness.

For essential clues for long-range defense planning, we must look to the structure of the international system and the evolving power configuration in the world. This configuration is shifting beyond the relatively manageable balance of power envisaged by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger 20 years ago, and toward a fragmented system that I call “general unalignment,” consisting of a dozen-and-a-half regional contenders. In this fragmented world, where no great powers can make a profit--or keep it--outside their own regions, most conflicts need not directly threaten, or even indirectly implicate, the United States unless we set long fuses to other regions by contracting military alliances with governments and factions.

Some general principles are also in order. The first is that the core values of our society--the lives and domestic property of our citizens, the integrity of our territory and the autonomy of our political processes--must be preserved against challenges, however unlikely, by organized forces in the world. This requires strategic deterrence in the form of offensive nuclear forces--though not necessarily the traditional ones. These weapons would be reserved for a second strike at military targets. Also, the types of nuclear forces should be such as to maximize “crisis stability”--that is, to discourage escalation in any lesser confrontation to the first use of nuclear weapons.

A second general principle is that the forces we keep, particularly our general-purpose forces, be “second-chance” forces--that is, diverse cadres that could be rebuilt in case some threat materialized that was massive, cumulative, directed against us and potentially irreversible if we did nothing to eliminate it. This principle argues against tailoring our forces too radically or specifically for the illusion of functionally or regionally precise missions.

What kind of defense program would these principles create “on the ground?” Though methodological precision is illusory, a certain degree of quantification is still in order, if only to pin down what we mean. The starting point, the Bush Administration’s present 1991 defense program, calls for $295 billion in budgetary authority; 2 million military personnel; an active general-purpose force structure that includes 19 land divisions (16 Army and three Marine), 25 Air Force tactical (fighter attack) air wings, and 14 Navy carrier battle groups with 13 air wings, plus the standard triad of strategic nuclear forces. If projected out five years, this would produce cumulative defense costs of $1.719 trillion.

A conservative projection of where the executive and legislative branches will move the defense program in five years is: $253 billion (in 1991 dollars); 1.7 million military personnel and a force structure of 16 1/3 land divisions (14 Army and 2 1/3 Marine), 18 to 20 Air Force tactical air wings, and 11 or 12 aircraft carriers with 10 or 11 Navy air wings. We would still have the nuclear triad, though under strategic arms reduction limits. This would come to a five-year defense bill of $1.474 trillion. Our government will predictably be delivering, over the next five years, comparative savings of $245 billion.

More can be done. My own prescribed defense program--after a five-year sequence of cuts--would cost (in 1991 dollars) $150 billion, require 1.25 million military personnel, and provide six Army divisions and two Marine divisions, 11 Air Force tactical air wings, six carriers with five air wings, in addition to strategic nuclear forces consisting of submarine-launched ballistic missiles and bombers with medium-range cruise missiles. These forces, based on U.S. territory, would not be committed to overseas defense. This reduced defense program produces, over half a decade, a further cumulative peace dividend, beyond the $245 billion already predictable, of $350 billion.

So more can be done--but not without sacrificing something. Some critics have fallen into the convenient habit of abusing the Bush Administration for totally mindless conservation of the defense program. But something is at stake here on the level of policy. A fairly large military is necessary if the United States is to continue to wield global influence (beyond the requisites of our own national security). Critics, including myself, who opt for drastically reduced forces must understand that they are also opting for a diminished American role in a less controllable world.

Yet I foresee such a world coming. Our country cannot afford to continue its global habits. What I am proposing is a military program, a force structure and a defense budget that are appropriate to the United States as a nation among nations in a post-imperial age.