Why Spare the Pentagon Budget? : Defense: There’s no rational need for a $270-billion force for fighting two wars at once.

The Republicans’ attempt to balance the budget by shrinking or eliminating government programs promises to affect virtually every sector of American society, some severely. But one institution is being spared even the tiniest, most symbolic of reductions: the Department of Defense.

There is no superpower threatening the United States, and none of the so-called rogue powers is any position to replace the Soviet Union as a significant adversary. Why, then, spare the Pentagon from the cutbacks that all other institutions are being asked to absorb?

The Republicans seek to freeze the Pentagon budget at $270 billion, about the same amount in 1995 dollars that was spent on national defense in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s (except during peak years of the Korean and Vietnam wars). This amount is needed, the Pentagon claims, to field sufficient forces to fight and defeat two Iraq-like regional powers simultaneously.

Curiously, the Republicans have endorsed what is essentially a Clinton Administration blueprint for national security. First developed by then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, the Pentagon’s “two-war” strategy was approved by President Clinton in August, 1993. Now, despite their repudiation of virtually every other aspect of Clinton’s leadership, the Republicans appear determined to support the Aspin blueprint into perpetuity.

The Administration plan assumes that the United States will face a host of rogue-state adversaries in the years ahead. Such states are said to possess large military establishments, seek weapons of mass destruction and sponsor terrorism or otherwise threaten international stability. Foremost among such countries are Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and North Korea.

Certainly these five pose a threat to their immediate neighbors, and their proliferation activities are a cause for international concern. But do they constitute a sufficient threat to justify our spending $270 billion per year on a Cold War-like military Establishment? This is something that the Republicans, no less than the Democrats, have hitherto failed to answer.

Examining the Pentagon’s stated logic for the two-war strategy, one finds the assumption that America’s future adversaries will be as powerful as Iraq was before Operation Desert Storm, and that their intended victims will be as weak and powerless as pre-war Kuwait. It further assumes that two such adversaries will band together in attacking U.S. interests. But there is a problem with this logic: No single country fits this template, let alone two.

None of the so-called rogue states possesses forces comparable to those fielded by Iraq in 1990. Libya has less than one-tenth the strength of pre-war Iraq. Iran and present-day Iraq possess about one-third of Iraq’s former strength, and Syria about half. Only North Korea comes close to pre-war Iraq in total strength, but it lacks the modern weapons once found in abundance in Iraqi arsenals. More to the point, North Korea faces not a helpless Kuwait but a strong and resilient South Korea, with an army of 635,000 and a resident U.S. force of 35,000.

As for weapons of mass destruction, none of these countries poses a threat of sufficient magnitude to justify a response on the order of current Pentagon plans. Iran, Libya, Syria and North Korea are believed to have chemical weapons, but not on the scale of pre-war Iraq--which discovered, to its chagrin, that having such weapons posed no obstacle to a speedy and conclusive victory by the United States. None of these countries has functioning nuclear weapons, and existing U.S. non-proliferation efforts--if vigorously pursued--will ensure that this remains the case.

No doubt other types of security threats will arise in the years ahead, along with various small-scale contingencies, and so we will need to maintain a versatile and capable force with a large pool of reserves. But we certainly do not require anything on the scale of the Pentagon’s $270-billion, two-war blueprint.

If we are to reduce the federal deficit while protecting the fundamental interests of American citizens, it will be necessary to choose between what we want and what we can afford. It is reasonable to ask for sacrifices in this process, if it can be shown that future generations will benefit from our self-denial. But such sacrifices must be made equitably, with all sectors of society sharing in the resulting hardship. And, in the absence of a Soviet-scale threat to national security, the Pentagon can and should be obliged to make sacrifices, too.