And Now the Arm-Twisting

Ayear ago, candidate George W. Bush warned the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention that the next president would find he was commander in chief of a “military in decline,” weakened by the double burden of too little money and too many responsibilities. As Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, liked to promise, help was on the way.

Among Bush’s first acts as president was to get Congress to approve a $5.6-billion supplemental defense appropriation. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld launched a sweeping strategic reassessment to determine how the armed forces should be reshaped to meet post-Cold War challenges. Congress expects to get the results of that review next month. What’s already clear is that the Bush-Rumsfeld conception of a smaller, better equipped, rapidly deployable and more effective fighting force may itself have to be reshaped as it encounters stubborn budgetary, political and institutional realities.

Bush seeks a $33-billion hike in the 2002 defense budget, to $329 billion. For 2003, he wants to launch a five-year plan to spend an additional $20 billion annually on research and development of new weapons. While large, these increases would still leave defense spending pretty much where it has been as a percentage of gross domestic product.

The problem is that defense has legitimate competitors for more dollars, in education and health care, for example. Moreover, the priority that Bush has given added defense spending comes at a time when the always fanciful projected federal revenue surpluses have begun to evaporate. In just the last few months, this year’s estimated surplus has shrunk from $281 billion to $158 billion. Take Social Security taxes out of the equation and the estimated surplus weighs in at $1 billion. With $1.35 trillion of the next decade’s supposed surpluses committed to tax cuts, future large spending increases for defense or anything else become problematical.

Congress may not be much help. Two of Rumsfeld’s sensible proposals for eliminating defense waste--shrinking the ineffective 99-plane B-1 bomber fleet by about one-third and closing redundant military facilities--have prompted the expected political outcry. As usual, every member of Congress is 100% for doing away with waste and abuse, so long as no constituents’ jobs are put at risk.

The other major barrier, as Rumsfeld could have foreseen from his service as Defense secretary in the mid-1970s, is the military’s institutional aversion to change. Each of the services will mobilize its allies in Congress to fight any cuts in its personnel or downgrading of its mission.

When Rumsfeld speaks of modernizing the military he is using the right word. The strategic outlook has changed significantly since the Soviet empire imploded, and the armed forces must change as well.

It’s not a challenge that can be met simply by appropriating more for defense. The first need is to reach a consensus on what threats the country most plausibly faces, decide on the best strategy to respond, and train and equip the armed forces accordingly. That’s where Rumsfeld wants to go. The big battle with be in bringing the services and Congress along with him.