Defense/Strategies Money Can't Buy

...The military weapons acquisition system, although perhaps less inefficient than often described, also needs to be changed...

...Those who serve there do not alternate for the remainder of their careers between work on the staff and service in the field...

...yet never have America's leaders explained publicly (nor, to my knowledge, privately) why such a tilt has occurred, what purposes it serves, or the rationale for the form which it has taken...

...Unfortunately, there is no evidence that it was this consideration that led the Reagan Administration to resurrect the program...

...Whereas in 1964 a quarter of the Army's main battle tanks were stationed in Europe, today well over two-fifths are...

...Regrettably, however, all three had their darker, counterproductive sides...

...The Defense Department did increase expenditure across the board, but the most notable increases were in procurement (as opposed to, say, research and development, manpower, or operations and training) which grew by fully 86 percent in four years...

...our strategy is ill-conceived and unworkable...

...A third and final area which needs attention in the second Reagan Administration concerns defense inputs-manpower, industrial base, and acquisition policy...

...In almost all cases (including Europe), host countries have become increasingly sensitive to issues of sovereignty, and cannier about the price they can exact from the American foreign aid budget for use of their territory...

...Another possibility is the return, in an administration or two, to McNamarism: that is, a civilian attempt (by the President or Secretary of Defense) to take over strategic planning and operational handling with the aid of a small band of junior civilian or military aides...

...and has not considered the long-term impact of having an armed forces in which the college-educated have not served...

...Indeed, it had to shrink, relative to the challenges it faced...

...Still, when Ronald Reagan assumed the Presidency the resentment of the Vietnam veterans-a minority in their generation of young men, and indeed, a minority of those who saw military service in those years-had not been assuaged...

...By pretending that mere expenditure could restore America to its golden years of nuclear and conventional security the Reagan Administration did not simply make promises it could not fulfill: It paved the way for disappointment with, if not rejection of, the.moderate defense increases it had planned...

...The U.S...

...The result was a budget that totalled some $270 billion in 1984, but which was modest by post-1950 standards-barely 6.5 percent of GNP as opposed to 8-10 percent under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy...

...In World War II, British coordination of land-based long-range aviation with the Royal Navy was essential for maintaining control of the seas...

...In other parts of the world (e.g., the Middle East) use of bases except for very narrow purposes is impossible, because of host country restrictions...

...in other cases it has shrunk (eg., simulator technology...

...Far from it...

...Recruiting statistics improved not only because of the greater monetary incentives a flush recruiting bureaucracy could offer, but also because military service was again respectable...

...Although at a public or mass level the Administration has salved the wounds of Vietnam, such pandering has only caused them to fester all the more at the elite level...

...Under him, the armed services have indulged their parochial appetites and proclivities, free from the discipline of a civilian master forcing choices or, indeed, simple cooperation...

...By insisting that any use of force be guaranteed public support, come only as a last resort, be used solely to protect vital interests, and have total victory as its aim, Weinberger subverted the rationale for the Reagan buildup (as William Safire shrewdly pointed out in the New York Times...

...Demographic trends (a shrinking pool of manpower available for military service) and the economic stagnation which has bedeviled Europe for a decade or more will likely set the stage for further European inward-turning, if not appeasement, and certainly weaken Europe's a Wlity to defend itself...

...In the Pacific during World War II, the U.S...

...Despite a generally inferior technological base, the Soviet Union has often been able to deploy materiel faster than the United States, thereby creating a technological gap where none should exist...

...We must narrow the widening gap between the moment of invention and the day on which a new weapon is issued to the troops...

...Ways and means must be found to enable the United States to expand military industrial production quickly in both areas...

...The problem is not that agreement is stalemated by bickering, although that occasionally happens, but just the reverse-an accumulation of ad hoc "treaties" negotiated by the services that leaves gaps in our defenses, precludes serious analysis of alternatives, and worst of all creates unwieldy and even incompetent military organizations and strategy...

...Given the increasing likelihood that American forces will see action in Central America, the Caribbean, or the Persian Gulf, it is important that the mistakes and failures of both Korea and Vietnam be assessed while there is still time...

...Without manipulating veterans' benefits-in other words, without resorting to the welfare state equivalent of conscience money-Reagan brought about a profound and insufficiently appreciated reconciliation between the embittered veterans of a dirty and obscure war, and their fellow citizens...

...How will the United States organize its forces for small wars...

...Even if the Reagan Administration simply delivered on late-Carter promises (which is about what it did), it is .by no means clear that its predecessor would have done so...

...The difficulties of quadri-service cooperation in Grenada have yet to be publicly acknowledged, although all well-read students of defense affairs know about them...

...The creation of a genuine general staff, made up of a tiny corps of several hundred strategic experts, trained at a single, rigorous three-year war college, and led by a single, powerful chief of defense (i.e., a bureaucratically stronger figure than the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) would help to remedy the second major deficiency in our defense policy-the lack of a coherent strategy...

...that they.were stabbed in the back by a treacherous press and intellectual elite...

...The post-World War II plenitude of strength and absence of serious rivals could not last and did not...

...Time, of course, and the failure of detente had softened many of the antagonisms of the late 1960s and early 1970s...

...In the absence of a real strategic policy, drift and wishful thinking are the most likely alternatives...

...This reform movement consists of a loose coalition-genuine military intellectuals, disgruntled middle-level officers, quasi-repentant anti-Vietnam war activists, and fanatical systems analysts-that hammers away on a few themes: Our weapons are too costly, too complicated, and ineffective...

...Two distinguished recent members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former Chairman General David Jones and former Army Chief of Staff "Shy" Meyer, have denounced the current system and called for major changes...

...Ronald Reagan still retains, in many ways, the mandate to rehabilitate this country's defenses: His prestige among the military remains high, as does his ability to explain to the American public the whys and wherefores of military policy...

...History tells us that such efforts to circumvent the main military organization will produce poor strategy...

...Each year since 1979 the defense budget has grown by slightly more than .2 percent of gross national product, with the sole exception of 1982, when spending jumped by .6 percent of GNP...

...From the very beginning of his presidency, Reagan made a substantial increase in defense expenditure the centerpiece of his foreign and security policy...

...The Administration's second defense achievement was more subtle: the healing of many of the scars of the Vietnam war...

...1984 it grew by 40 percent...

...Nonetheless, these facts cannot detract from the reality that our difficulties are far greater than the Administration would seem to believe, and that its solutions are partial at best, radically flawed at worst...

...The Administration has been content to take refuge in short-term trends while neglecting the larger problems...

...For them and their families, and for the families of those who had fallen, the mourning and remembrance were painfully incomplete...

...There is no reason to think that long-range naval aviation has lost any of its utility since World War II...

...yet history also tells us that this is the characteristic response when that organization fails to function properly...

...This occurred despite years of talk about inoperable communications systems...

...In the absence of strategic thinking marginal changes in force structure provide a kind of military analgesic, seeming to alleviate the symptoms but leaving the root causes of the disease untouched...

...Conversely, there has not been (and in view of the rising deficit, will not be) the kind of quantum leaps that Reagan in 1980 seemed to argue would be necessary...

...This notion, as inaccurate as it is widespread, does little but hurt American prestige and power...

...Nonetheless, it must be pointed out that the way the Administration, and particularly the Secretary of Defense, did so pandered to the understandable yet unacceptable and pernicious desires of the senior officer corps never to fight any limited war again...

...In the past two decades, for example, the United States has increased in minor but cumulatively significant ways its commitment of military resources to the forward defense of Germany...

...The next time American statesmen attempt to use force abroad, the crisis could erupt with possibly catastrophic consequences...

...That operation (ostensibly aimed at the liberation of American medical students) had a host of beneficial effects, not least the removal of a brutal dictatorship and its replacement by a moderate democratic regime...

...Even so, one can reasonably ask whether other possibilities exist for similar kinds of "cost-imposing" strategies...

...and, remarkably enough in view of the decade that had just ended, the President met minimal congressional resistance to his plans...

...Secretary of Defense Weinberger is probably the most laissez faire administrator the Pentagon has seen since the Eisenhower years...

...All the more reason, then, to hope (if not, alas, to expect) that the defense policies of the second Reagan term will depart from many themes of the first.econd Reagan term will depart from many themes of the first...

...Only the Department of Defense escaped the eye of zealous budget cutters...

...Whereas the defense budget increased in real terms by merely 5 percent between 1976 and 1980, between 1980 and...

...But he also restored a bond between the American military and American society which had been ruptured by the war, and by this enhanced the strength of America's defenses...

...The coup de main also intimidated local Marxist-Leninists, reassured pro-Western forces in the Caribbean and Central America, enhanced the reputation for toughness of the American President, and further increased the domestic popularity of the American armed forces...

...There has been no effort to learn the lessons of Vietnam in the matter of command or organizational structure (e.g., in the urgency of unity of command in even a small theater of war, or in the use of one dominant service in a given theater...

...As a result, a defense buildup that was initially quite popular, and that remained rather modest, has lost the unquestioned backing it enjoyed four years ago...

...It is a view as dangerous and extreme as that once expressed by the justly-relieved General Douglas MacArthur...

...Rather, JSC duty is but one more "ticket" to be punched...

...The sight of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese-fishermen and ex-bankers, peasants as well as intellectuals-taking to pirate-infested seas in fragile boats demonstrated to all but the most doctrinaire or obtuse opponents of the war that, the prudence of our efforts aside, the justice of the cause was not in doubt...

...Meanwhile, the Army avoids amphibious operations training (although it conducted more amphibious assaults in World War II than did the Marines) and the Marines shy away from the creation of paratroop units (although such outfits were shown to be necessary in World War II) because neither organization may infringe on the other's autonomy...

...Item: The Marine Corps has begun-slowly but steadily-to acquire a suit of weapons different from those used by the Army...

...In and of itself, this may not be a bad thing...

...Yet even their recommendations fall short of the kind of drastic overhaul that would create a true national defense staff manned by the cream of America's officer corps...

...Item: The Grenada rescue/invasion was conducted by units from all four services, with the result that the Joint Chiefs divided this tiny island in half between Navy and Marine Corps on the one hand, and Army and Air Force on the other...

...An examination of where American forces are now deployed, how they are constituted and equipped, and how all has changed over time, reveals that our defenses are the product of a sedimentary piling up of past commitments and marginal decisions...

...The first defense achievement of the Reagan Administration, then, was a minor increase in the size and a major improvement in the quality of the American arsenal and armed forces...

...and that virtually any arrangement is acceptable to ensure that next time the military will fight to win, without limits and without civilian interference...

...All of this is not to say that defense would have been better off in a second Carter Administration...

...has not reconsidered the wisdom of active forces that are heavily dependent on reserve mobilization to be effective...

...How can the United States exploit the material and organizational weaknesses of Soviet defenses, and thereby offset some of the advantages that accrue to the Soviets because of their totalitarian political structure, long-term investment in defense, covert operations capabilities, and geographical location...

...In a score of ceremonies and speeches, parades and presentations, he managed to settle emotional accounts...

...One sound idea which has been rejected time and again is that the United States buy higher technology weapons for the active forces and cheaper, lower technology for the reserves and draft-based mobilization forces...

...Alarmed by the unremitting buildup of Soviet military power, and by the ruthless use of that power in the invasion of Afghanistan in late December 1979, the American public repudiated a seemingly timid and ineffectual President and his policies...

...recruiters found themselves welcome again in high schools...

...None of the problems or challenges described here began under the Reagan Administration, and in a number of cases (e.g., that of the mobilization base) some efforts have been made to overcome them...

...In the first category, the Administration has temporarily eased pressure for a resumption of the draft by raising wages for soldiers...

...The humiliating Iranian hostage episode and the dispiriting shambles of the Iranian rescue mission epitomized for many Americans the failure of the Carter Administration to cope with America's national security dilemmas...

...In some areas the gap between civil and military technologies has grown (e.g., mercantile shipping, where the military requires old-style break-bulk freighters, but where the civilian world has moved to containerized shipping...

...whereas in 1964, 58 percent of our forces stationed overseas were in Europe, now 68 percent are-and an increasing proportion of those forces are stationed in Germany...

...Our own demographic and fiscal trends point to increasing pressure on the manpower system: The cohort of available young men is shrinking, the budget will get tighter, and all the while increases in overall force structure are being planned...

...One long-term trend in the postwar period has been the erosion of our global basing system, inherited from American and British efforts in World War II and before...

...As things now stand, force planning (in reality, budget tinkering and minor organizational reforms) substitutes for strategic planning...

...Some progress has been made on multi-year funding that would make production cheaper and defense business more predictable...

...For a variety of reasons, including Army delay and the Marines' own search for organizational independence, the Corps will acquire its own light tanks, mortars, and assault rockets...

...Throughout the operation, the various forces had difficulty communicating with one another, for reasons both technical and human...

...Finally, even where the Reagan Administration has used force-in Grenada and Lebanon most notably- unresolved problems remain...

...There is no central, intensive war college to train the small elite of officers a genuine defense staff would need...

...The increase in the defense budget was, on the whole, indiscriminate...

...Nonetheless, there is an element of truth in each strand of discontent, and it must be expected that a belligerent and unreasoned military reform movement will gain strength- may even come to dominate major political factions-unless the Defense Department can find and express some coherent strategy, and can demonstrate more self-awareness and capacity for self-criticism than its leader's speeches indicate...

...The B-l bomber makes sense (and made sense when the Carter Administration killed it) because the very existence of such a weapon, whether or not it is necessary in the narrowest sense, forces the Soviet Union to invest heavily in air defenses...

...In theory, strategy-the matching of military means to political objectives and the politico-military environment-should dominate force planning...

...The curious fact is that the magnitude of Reagan's defense budget increases did not depart sharply from the trends of the last two years of the Carter Administration...

...Combined with the military reformers' distrust, this Vietnam syndrome represents a profound yet hidden crisis in civil-military relations...

...to allow a nation to honor men who had returned home to neither parade nor memorial...

...Consider Secretary Weinberger's recent speech at the National Press Club, in which he set out six tests for use of force...

...Cadet uniforms sprouted on campuses where only eight or nine years before rioters had goaded weak faculties and deans to evict ROTC...

...A he following are merely a few of the outstanding questions of American strategy: How should the United States cope with the strategic decline of Europe...

...our armed forces are too managerial and un-warlike...

...Nor can we assume that any other administration, Democratic or Republican, would have done much better...

...Moreover, the long-term consequences of higher salaries and pension benefits (including rising manpower costs in the future and erosion of traditional patterns of barracks life in the present) have yet to be adequately addressed...

...Indeed, as many have observed, even Grenada would fail to meet Weinberger's exacting standards...

...Valuable as the larger Reagan defense budgets were, they could not hope to reverse in four, or even eight, years two decades of remorseless Soviet military investment, and they could not change the fact that American power has been in decline since 1964...

...In so doing, Reagan undoubtedly desired to do justice to brave men, and so he did...

...But ways must also be found to reduce service temptations to make military specifications excessively demanding...

...W hat should be on the agenda for the second term...

...The Weinberger Defense Department simply brushes these criticisms aside, and indeed, they are often poorly thought-out and rudely put...

...Moreover, by exaggerating the magnitude of change under the new administration, Reagan's men fostered the impression abroad and at home that American foreign and defense policies oscillate wildly from administration to administration...

...Navy and Marines (unlike their British counterparts) developed forces capable of operating with only minimal land-basing: What would be the equivalent today...

...The current system fosters procurement-and worse, strategic and operational-compromises among all the services...

...The derision with which the speech was received shows how far Weinberger-and those he speaks fot in the Pentagon-have departed from the realm of strategic, or indeed, common sense...

...At the same time, it has not stemmed the increasing (and ill thought-out) use of women in almost all branches...

...Money poured into other areas as well, bringing a new vigor to the badly underfunded forces of the Carter period...

...This fiscal reality, among other factors, suggests that some of the critical security problems this country faces" will remain unsolved, increases or no increases...

...For the most part, today's ambitious officer avoids assignment to the Joint Staff of the JCS...

...Thirdly, the Reagan Administration demonstrated a willingness to use force abroad, and in one case-Grenada- did so with great success...

...The industrial mobilization base remains deficient, in part because of the kinds of weapons we buy, which are not suitable for surge production in the event of war...

...The absence of central direction- bemoaned particularly by those of a hawkish bent-has also fostered the growth of disparate bands of military reformers...

...The cumulative effect was, to be sure, considerable...

...A similar reluctance to make senior generals and admirals pay for their mistakes followed the calamitous Iran rescue mission...

...Instead, the country has four war colleges of varying quality, which offer one-year courses to hundreds upon hundreds of officers...

...Item: The Soviet Union has for years now deployed medium range bombers-the so-called Backfire bomber-as part of its long-range naval aviation forces...

...Worse yet, by ballyhooing the defense buildup as a cure for America's strategic problems they grossly understated, distorted, or even (unwittingly) concealed America's real strategic dilemmas...

...On the other hand, the Reagan Administration will delude itself if it thinks it has done anything more than plug a few gaping holes, shore up a few crumbling walls, and put a fresh coat of paint on the edifice of America's national defense...

...By far the most important item is organizational reform, including a drastic overhaul of the Joint Chiefs of Staff...

...These three achievements-the refurbishment of America's weaponry and improvement in the quality of her servicemen, the resolution of Vietnam-era resentments and shame, and the first successful use of American force in over a decade-were indeed substantial...

...Of what precisely did this effort consist...

...Thus the Reagan defense budget increase has been substantial, but by no means as massive as either its critics or partisans have claimed...

...In the case of Lebanon, the President's well-intentioned desire to shoulder the blame for his military subordinates prevented a salutary set of dismissals of general officers following the atrocious lapses in security at the Marine barracks in Beirut...

...Critics and partisans alike agreed that never before had the country seemed so united in support of a stronger defense...

...Above all, we must recognize that when the basic hardware of the United States Army-its new light anti-tank rocket, its light machine gun, and its light infantry mortar-has to be bought abroad, or when a country that once pioneered the use of unmanned, remotely piloted vehicles has to buy such devices from one of the world's smallest states, something is profoundly wrong...

...Acquisition of long-desired items (e.g., the M-l tank) was speeded up, and new items (the B-1B strategic bomber) were ordered, as a number of Carter Administration decisions were reversed...

...How should the United States react to the increasing fragility of its basing structure...

...Indeed, in the minds of some participants and observers, force planning is strategic planning, which is hardly the case...

...Even more regrettably, the first Reagan term left uncured-in some cases exacerbated-deeper problems which will surface in the second term...

...American strategists must ask: How much of a military commitment should the United States.make to Europe, and what kind...

...Where did the money go...

...In'fact, just the reverse may be true...

...The ultimate result could be the kind of catastrophe that overtook the nation in 1941, when the Army and Navy had two very different war plans for dealing with Japan in the Pacific-the Army proposing to defend the Philippines, the Navy to abandon them...

...In a number of areas (e.g., the Philippines) sociopolitical upheaval could deprive the United States of vital air and sea facilities...

...It is painful to cavil at the second achievement of the Reagan Administration, the healing of the wounds of Vietnam...

...Pay increases improved recruiting and retention, war stocks grew, spending for most kinds of training went up, and the services were able to engage in programs of refitting or modest expansion which had been deferred during and after the Vietnam war...

...armed forces, by contrast, have been unable to devise an adequate comparable arrangement...

...As a visit to any of the nation's war colleges will reveal, America's senior officers are perilously close to believing that they fought the Vietnam war with one and perhaps two hands tied behind their backs...