PERSPECTIVE ON DEFENSE : War Games Bloody the Budget : Congress wants to spend billion s for strategies the Pentagon doesn’t support while domestic programs get axed.

Bound by their promise to move toward a balanced budget, members of Congress have made a challenging task even more difficult by proposing to increase military spending at the same time they are cutting spending for almost every other program. The Senate has approved a $265.3-billion defense bill--$7.5 billion more than the Pentagon asked for. The measure must still be reconciled with a similar House version.

If the final bill survives a threatened presidential veto (over other provisions), Congress must make additional reductions in medical care, education, housing and environmental protection programs, among others. Getting majorities hammered together in support of specific cuts will produce brutal conflicts of interests and ideologies.

Why does Congress want to increase military spending when it will cause so much pain? The answer seems to lie in two documents. The first is the “contract with America,” which pledges the House Republican majority to support increased military spending. The second document is less well known. It is “The Bottom Up Review,” a report prepared in the Pentagon under the late Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin, and approved by President Clinton in September, 1993.

Under this plan, the United States is required to maintain military forces powerful enough to fight and win two major regional conflicts, nearly simultaneously, without any support from friends or allies. The fact is that the forces specified in the plan to support a two-war strategy cannot be maintained, operated and modernized with the funds identified in the current $1.6-trillion, six-year plan for military spending.

It is the gap between stated requirements and planned funding that generates the pressure for military add-ons. This discrepancy suggests an obvious question: Are the requirements valid? Secretary of Defense William Perry told the Senate Committee on Appropriations last year: “Nowhere in our planning do we believe we are going to have to fight two wars at once. . . I think it is an entirely implausible scenario that we would ever have to fight two wars at once.” This is a strange statement in support of a plan to spend $1.6 trillion to be ready to fight two wars simultaneously. He rationalized the paradox by explaining: “If we are fighting one war at once, [sic] we want to have sufficient strength to be able to deter another war; that is, not invite somebody.”

Perry seems to be arguing that the second-war capability is needed as an insurance policy against an implausible event for which no plans are being made. A premium reckoned in billions of dollars a year is a very high price to pay for such a policy.

Even less valid is the requirement that the United States prepare to fight two wars without any support from friends and allies. We spent more than 40 years and $12 trillion during the Cold War providing a defensive shield for the democracies of the world against the threat of Soviet aggression. We have every right now to expect them to honor and support U.S. leadership in situations that demand a military response in the interests of global stability. It is unreasonable to assume that we no longer share a mutual interest with them in dealing with regional violence and international terrorism.

The record since the end of the Cold War is proof that America does command such support. The record is equally clear that America will not act alone in regional conflicts. The campaign against Iraq following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait provided a clear example of a coalition response to a rogue nation. Although it was the largest U.S. military action since Vietnam, we needed to commit only about 17% of our total active and reserve personnel and less than one-third of our combat units to bring about a smashing victory.

The tragedy in Bosnia today is another example of U.S. insistence on coalition action, even though we clearly have the military power to prevail without assistance. For nearly two years, the Clinton Administration pushed hard for air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs, but the President was unwilling to act independently in the face of objections from NATO allies. Only when they agreed, after the tragic events in Sarajevo on Aug. 28, was allied air power unleashed.

If members of Congress want to ease the pain of cutting Head Start, environmental cleanup, Medicare, student loans and other valuable federal programs, they need only turn to the Pentagon’s budget. They can safely and wisely forgo unneeded increases in military spending to support an implausible two-war, go-it-alone, military strategy.