Military Reform More Gradual Than Expected

The Bush administration’s plan to overhaul the military is shaping up as a gradual and protracted effort, rather than the kind of explosive change that many had come to expect, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told lawmakers Wednesday during closed-door briefings.

Rumsfeld is still aiming to bring major reform, as President Bush promised during his presidential campaign. But, after learning the extent of the military’s needs in a four-month study, Rumsfeld is telling lawmakers and defense officials that he intends to reshape strategy and the forces over a period of years and will make the first major budget changes in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, 2003.

“It’s not going to be a big bang,” Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), ranking minority member of the House Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday after a two-hour closed briefing with Rumsfeld. Agreed Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Pleasanton), another member of the panel: “It’s going to be bold, but multiyear and generational.”

This slower pace could hurt the chance of reform; some reform advocates have argued that the administration needed to use its political capital early in the term, lest its leverage dwindle. But Rumsfeld is arguing that doing the job right will require lengthy study and consultations with Congress and others.

He acknowledged to lawmakers in the briefing that he remains deeply immersed in his study, and he left some lawmakers with the impression that he won’t finish for several months. He told reporters that, despite speculation to the contrary, he has made no decisions on big weapon systems or on whether to cut the active-duty forces.

“It takes time. . . . I don’t need deadlines,” he said.

Nevertheless, some of Rumsfeld’s intentions are becoming clear though his public and private statements.

He told lawmakers that he believes that the Pentagon needs to sharply improve the troops’ quality of life, starting with housing that now is often substandard. Lawmakers said they expect Rumsfeld to include funds for this purpose in a $6-billion fiscal 2001 budget supplement that he said he would deliver to Congress this week.

Rumsfeld wants to change the key strategic principle that the Pentagon needs enough military force to be able to fight two major regional wars in quick succession. Following this idea, the Pentagon has maintained enough force to be able to quickly win wars with North Korea and Iraq.

But Rumsfeld told lawmakers he believes that future threats can’t be easily anticipated.

At his briefing of lawmakers, he handed out a paper chronicling how the nation had again and again in the 20th century failed to anticipate threats that set off war.

The paper argued that, when the conflict in Vietnam emerged in the early 1960s, U.S. policymakers were preoccupied with a supposed “missile gap” with the Soviet Union. And it pointed out that in 1989, when Dick Cheney was nominated to be George Bush’s Defense secretary, the threat from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was considered so remote that the word “Iraq” was not mentioned once at Cheney’s confirmation hearing.

“History should compel planners to humbly acknowledge” that circumstances often change, Rumsfeld wrote in the paper.

And he argued that the Pentagon should “at least give some thought” to abandoning its strategy of preparing to fight a two-front war against specific adversaries. Instead, it should consider sizing the military to be able to fight to a certain level of capability against yet unidentified enemies anywhere in the world.

Rumsfeld has suggested the idea of organizing joint task forces that could be sent quickly to spots around the globe. And beginning with comments at his confirmation hearing, he has made clear that he believes the Pentagon should put more emphasis on developing weapons that have the speed, sensors and stealth that make them useful for long distances.

Rumsfeld also has made clear that he is interested in changing the rules that require many officers and senior enlisted personnel to retire in middle age when they are still, he says, “at the top of their game.” He intends to try to overhaul the Pentagon’s acquisition process and other business practices, which he views as wasteful and inefficient.

He has made accelerating the effort to build a missile defense system a priority.

The Pentagon is expected to add billions to the $4.5 billion it could spend on missile defense in the fiscal 2002 budget. That budget proposal, expected to be sent to Congress in about a month, could seek up to $20 billion more for defense spending.

Rumsfeld has made clear that he also wants to cut the U.S. peacekeeping role around the world. He has asked the Pentagon’s joint staff to assess the possibility of troop reductions in the Sinai, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.

Officials in Europe have recently expressed alarm that the United States could destabilize the Balkans by withdrawing troops from there.

Yet it remains unclear to what extent other top administration officials share Rumsfeld’s views about the urgency of an overseas pullback.