Now for the Hard Part: What to Do About Defense Budget : Cheney’s approach makes some sense, but there still are problems

Just as the Persian Gulf War will surely realign Middle East politics, it should also prompt reassessment of U.S. defense spending. President George Bush and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney released the defense budget for fiscal year 1992 a month ago, but with war’s end that budget will get increased scrutiny in the coming months. And it should.

THE DOLLARS: Cheney’s budget is the best attempt yet to square defense planning with the huge federal deficit and momentous political changes in Eastern Europe. The 1992 budget totals $290.8 billion, a 3.3% decline, after inflation, from current spending of $285.6 billion.

Even so, the defense budget will gobble up 20 cents of every dollar the federal government spends next year. Moreover, the budget did not include costs for the war. Last week Cheney asked for an additional $15 billion in federal funds, and this figure could rise if the allies do not honor their pledges.

THE TROOPS: However the “new world order” emerges, the United States will continue to face far-flung threats. In place of traditional, large standing armies, we will increasingly rely on a smaller number of flexible forces. Mindful of this need, Cheney has appropriately cut the number of active-duty military personnel from more than 2 million at present to 1.8 million at the end of 1993 and to 1.65 million in 1995.

THE WEAPONS: Some of Cheney’s decisions about specific weapons are questionable. Many of the cuts in our strategic arsenal, particularly in the Trident submarine force and the mobile MX system, acknowledge the vastly weakened Soviet threat and START-mandated reductions. But the Pentagon has allocated funds for four additional B-2 bombers in 1992 on top of the original 15 planes. Yet at a staggering $1 billion per plane, more B-2s--whose primary mission is to bomb the Soviet Union--are a luxury we cannot afford.

Cheney has also increased the Strategic Defense Initiative by $1.71 billion over last year to $4.58 billion. But SDI has become a weapons system in search of a mission. Supporters now argue for cooperative U.S.-Soviet deployment of SDI against “mutual threats” rather than for a system designed to intercept a Soviet attack. Yet even “cooperative” deployment of SDI, if feasible, would be frightfully unaffordable.

Cheney’s decisions on conventional weapons raise other questions. The 1992 budget somewhat reduces, or ends, procurement for many tactical weapons currently in production. Some of these weapons, including the Apache helicopter, the Patriot missile and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, worked well in the Gulf. In their place, Cheney wants to invest in newer technology, including the Advanced Tactical Fighter, the AMRAAM missile and the C-17 cargo plane. Yet these new systems cost much more than would iteration of the current generation of weapons, particularly as these new systems move into full production. Is a jump to a new generation of technology necessary now?

THE TRADE-OFFS: Difficult defense choices are emerging from the sandstorm Saddam Hussein kicked up in the Middle East. The familiar, if frightful, threat of the Superpower Apocalypse has receded, though not disappeared; military threats are becoming more diffuse and harder to identify. The tools of calculation that defense analysts use worked best in the Cold War. We could then, with relative accuracy, count Soviet weapons and build our arsenals accordingly.

But with weapons stockpiled around the world, threats can come from anywhere; thus, decisions about how many of which weapons to build become less a measurement of military need than social philosophy: Should we spend more for B-2 bombers or for health care? The $4.58 billion earmarked for SDI alone would increase federal spending next year on education by more than 15%.

As our social problems--and the federal deficit--grow, we would do well to rethink some of these choices.