COLUMN LEFT : We’re Keeping Europe Safe From Ghosts : The Cold War’s over, but the U.S. is still spending $100 billion fighting a nonexistent enemy.

Last fall, thousands of U.S. troops joined in annual NATO military exercises in Germany. The Germans would not allow them to use tanks; they didn’t want their roads and farm lands torn up. Close air support was verboten; the Germans didn’t want their windows broken or their children scared.

But troops have to do something, so the exercises went ahead anyway. The NATO forces practiced against forces coming from the South, not the East. Since Italy is south of Germany, reporters were naturally curious about the enemy’s identity. The NATO spokesman replied, “It is a generic enemy. You could say they are from Generia.”

The United States is still a rich country, as the President reminded us in his State of the Union address. We may wish to contribute to keeping peace in Europe. But this year, the President wants us to spend about $100 billion--almost one-third of our military budget--defending Europe against Generia.

In his address, the President hailed changes of “biblical proportions” in the world, but they are not visible in his budget. The President celebrated our victory in the 40-year Cold War, promising that “we can stop making the sacrifices we had to make when we had an avowed enemy that was a superpower.” Seldom has the gulf between word and deed been so great.

President Bush announced cuts in military spending totaling $50 billion over five years. Fifty billion dollars is a lot of money, but it represents little more than 3% of the $1.4 trillion, five-year military spending plan drawn up while the Soviet Union was still unified. The Soviet Union no longer exists. Russia has announced it will slash military spending by 80% and stop aiming its nuclear weapons at U.S. cities. Russian President Boris Yeltsin has even asked to join NATO. The Germans are paying to house the former Soviet troops left in Germany.

Yet President Bush plans to keep 150,000 soldiers in Europe indefinitely. We will continue to spend more to defend Germany than the Germans do. Even Republicans are assailing this folly. Conservative Arizona Sen. John McCain, a hawkish former POW, complains that under the President’s plan more than half of our entire force structure in 1988 would still have a “primary mission . . . of refighting World War II against a Warsaw Pact enemy that no longer exists. “Enough is enough.” McCain, who wants more U.S. forces to police the Third World, would still reduce the military budget by one-third, saving more than $120 billion in five years.

You might see the President’s plan for the military as a makework jobs program for these recessionary times, if it were not so costly to both our short- and long-term future. We are losing our place in the global economy. We desperately need public investment in areas vital to any modern economy--in educating our children, in training our workers, in rebuilding our roads, bridges and sewers, in developing fast trains and renewable energy.

The end of the Cold War provides a historic opportunity to change our priorities, to use the money so long devoted to the defense of allies abroad to meet the economic challenges we now face at home.

In his State of the Union address, the President sounded the bugle, but failed to lead the charge. “Yesterday’s challenges are behind us,” the President said, “tomorrow’s are being born.” Yet he seems utterly incapable of understanding that today’s challenges are primarily economic, not military. The world is a dangerous place. But as former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara has testified, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we can maintain the strongest military in the world and still reduce military spending by half. We can save $300 billion or more in five years, and use that money to get our own house in order. We can help defense workers--the men and women who gave their working lives in service for their country--make the transition to civilian employment. We can offer our share of aid to the peoples of the former Soviet Union in their winter of desperation. And we will still have hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild the foundations for a prosperous, dynamic economy.

All we need is a commitment and a plan. The President has offered neither. Now the public must demand that the Congress not squander the historic opportunity we have to get this country going again.