U.S. May Limit Its Wars to One at a Time : Military: The Administration weighs new approach to competing trouble spots. Major effort at one would have to await victory at the other.

The Clinton Administration is crafting a new post-Cold War defense strategy that calls for reshaping the military to handle fewer wars at once as a means of enabling the White House to continue deep cuts in defense spending without reducing U.S. commitments around the world.

The strategy would abandon the current policy of supporting a military force big enough to fight--and win--two regional conflicts simultaneously and, instead, would maintain only enough might to win one major war and mount a holding action to contain a second enemy until more forces became available.

Under the plan, the United States would use air power and some ground troops to hold a second aggressor at bay until the main elements of U.S. forces defeated the first. Then, the military would redeploy all of its forces to the second theater, presumably winning there as well.

Defense Department officials contend that even with such a narrowed capability, the Administration would be able to meet America’s current military commitments around the world and still slash Pentagon spending by the 21% that President Clinton has planned through fiscal 1997.

The strategy, put together by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and known informally as “win-hold-win,” was reported in Sunday’s editions of the New York Times and confirmed by officials traveling with Defense Secretary Les Aspin.

Aspin’s spokesman, Vernon A. Guidry, told reporters that other options are being considered.

Officials conceded privately that the plan--almost identical to one that Aspin drafted last year as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee--is emerging as the favorite and is likely to be the centerpiece of the “bottom-up review” of defense policy that the secretary has ordered.

The proposal constitutes a major departure from the post-Cold War defense strategy set by the George Bush Administration in 1990, which called for maintaining a so-called “base force” capable of winning two major regional conflicts at once.

Under the base-force plan, the United States has supported enough forces to win both a Persian Gulf-sized war and a regional conflict in, say, Korea--each with overwhelming strength. The base force includes 12 divisions of troops, 12 Navy aircraft carriers and 24 tactical air wings.

Under the win-hold-win strategy, the Administration would maintain only enough military strength to win the Persian Gulf-sized war and keep North Korea, say, at bay long enough to enable U.S. forces to mop up the Gulf-sized operation. It then would mount a major offensive to win the second conflict.

According to the Pentagon plan, that would require only 10 divisions of troops, 10 Navy aircraft carriers and 20 tactical air wings, supplemented by 100 ready-to-deploy attack bombers. The holding action in a second theater of operations would depend on air power.

Another option prepared by the Joint Chiefs would slash the nation’s military forces to sufficient strength only to win one major regional conflict--eight divisions of troops, eight aircraft carriers and 16 tactical air wings. But most officials believe that would be cutting back too much.

Officials said the big problem with the base-force concept of the Bush era is that it cannot be maintained in the face of the sharp reductions in defense spending that the Administration has proposed. Yet, they said, paring costs by reducing the military budget across the board is bound to hurt military readiness.

They argued that by cutting back on the number of conflicts that the military would be required to win--rather than forcing it to meet the same challenges with fewer troops and weapons--the win-hold-win plan guarantees that the military would have enough to accomplish its tasks.

Under that plan, the nation would know in advance that it could not mount full-scale actions against two major enemies at once and thus would plan its military intervention more carefully, one official said.

But officials concede that the plan is likely to come under attack from congressional conservatives, who are almost certain to denounce it as inadequate.

The plan also is expected to meet at least some opposition from the Navy, which has been insisting that it needs at least 12 aircraft carriers--rather than 10--to carry out its mission to provide a “forward presence” around the world.

It was not immediately clear how the Marine Corps would fare under win-hold-win, but officials hinted that the Marines might come out well because the plan relies on them to provide much of the initial U.S. firepower in any regional conflict.