Excess Bases Hobble U.S. Might

The Pentagon has repeatedly warned that keeping unneeded military bases open steals resources urgently needed for equipment and troops. The warning continues to fall on deaf ears in Congress. The Senate Armed Services Committee has rejected a compromise plan for one further round of base closings, to begin in 2001. That leaves the Defense Department with the unpleasant choice of watching the nation’s military effectiveness decline or using a form of guerrilla warfare to try to shift funds away from the redundant bases. For now the odds seem to favor the latter course.

Defense Secretary William Cohen, with the support of the service chiefs, has already warned that some facilities might just be allowed to deteriorate, with money for maintenance and repairs withheld. Cohen recognizes the harshness of this approach and the effect it would have on the civilian and military work force at the bases. But a Congress that refuses to take the politically uncomfortable but necessary step of authorizing further base closings invites such a policy. At stake is up to $20 billion that could be more wisely spent to support the armed forces in their missions. That money has to come from somewhere, and redundant bases, relics of the Cold War, are the logical source.

A congressionally approved plan for an orderly new round of base closings could, as in the past, provide federal aid to cushion the impact on affected areas. But an approach that simply withholds spending for certain facilities carries no safety net, even though its economic impact might be severe. Congressional opponents of base closings, who profess to be concerned about the well-being of their constituents, may in fact be assuring that some of those constituents are fated to suffer real hardships.

No one in Congress has made a plausible national security case for preserving bases that the armed services have identified as unneeded and wasteful. Congress opposes more closings because they are politically unpopular and, in the case of Republicans, because President Clinton clumsily sought for his own political purposes to soften the impact of a major base closing in vote-rich California in 1995.

But none of this has anything to do with the needs of the military and the missions Congress expects it to carry out. It’s most curious that senators who voted recently to enlarge NATO--and in the process America’s overseas defense commitments--should forget that.