Rethinking the Pentagon Budget

...military budget line by line, keeping two simple questions in mind: What should our realistic defense goals be...

...And, most amazing of all, just a tiny portion of that vast sum is actually devoted to protecting Americans living in the 50 states...

...Defining the principal legitimate goals of the U.S...

...For example, any critique of the U.S...

...This would entail a 90 per cent cut in nuclear weaponry funds, 60 per cent in research and development, and 40 per cent in General Purpose Forces...

...For their opinions to carry weight in contracting the size of the Defense Establishment, the authors would have had to place greater emphasis on the economic consequences of the waste in the military budget...

...Some might well feel panicky and if that feeling were to spread to the Allies, and the Soviets were thus tempted to Ilex their muscles, the goal of greater stability would vanish...

...A mere seven pages are devoted to this topic, although dollars and cents alone talk loud enough to challenge the Joint Chiefs in Congress, the one probable source of a significant reduction in defense spending...

...currently faces no serious military threat, except from the Soviet Union's nuclear missiles...

...Considered strictly as an analysis of ends and means, the book is further weakened by the failure to sufficiently support its premises...

...though proportionately less so in case there arises a need for a rapid build-up...

...Naturally, a good deal of attention is paid to the situation in Western Europe, now the most heavily armed territory in the history of the planet...

...Nevertheless, The Price of Defense does make clear to the nonspecialist why that price is so high, and does offer intriguing proposals for bringing it down...

...Unfortunately, many of the authors' proposals for increasing the efficiency of nato forces are old saws: preposi-tioning more U.S...

...military budget alone is close to the gross national product of Canada, and is larger than the gross national product of all but eight countries in the world...

...Most new weapons systems, except defensive ones, would similarly be eliminated...

...But it is the professed polemical aspect of The Price of Defense that most reveals its shortcomings...

...The upshot of their research is that U.S...

...military ought at least address the question of why it is necessary for us to maintain a nuclear strike force...

...Reviewed by Christopher B. Daly The fourth and final appendix to the 323-page Department of Defense Annual Report that Secretary Harold Brown recently submitted to Congress consists of 141 abbreviations and acronyms—from AAH (for Advanced Attack Helicopter) to WWMCCS (Worldwide Military Command and Control System...

...The closing chapter, titled "To Learn, to Decide, to Act," recognizes that "producing a book in itself does not change policy...

...Early on, the point is made that while we are all "consumers" of defense, we have no practical way of regulating the "producers...

...The "overkill" in the nuclear program would go altogether...

...It is also emblematic of the thick verbal fog sheltering the Pentagon from the citizen who would inquire into the cost-effectiveness of the country's soldiery...

...The book is offered as a tentative plan for righting that imbalance...

...Should a U.S...

...the authors simply take it for granted that such a force, albeit diminished, should be kept...

...Yet, the followup action recommended the average reader amounts to little more than writing letters to the same congressmen who have been rather meekly approving defense budgets for years...

...So would the bulk of the aircraft carrier fleet, useful, the authors say, only against Third World targets...

...The authors, two-thirds of whom have credentials from Harvard or MIT, formed "an informal study group" in 1975 to consider the "problem" and bring a different perspective to a field that for decades has been the province of Pentagon elites, "neutral" analysts on Capitol Hill and assorted other experts...

...The importance of this cannot be overstated, for it is only by looking at the whole that the role of the parts becomes clear and the thinking of the policy makers becomes apparent...

...For the frustrated nonprofessional suspicious that we spend too much of our national treasure on tanks and such, however, there is now The Price of Defense, written by six nonmilitary thinkers as a proposal to cut—really cut—U.S...

...Because the Pact countries have that capability,though, and because the Allies fear just such an attack, the possibility of war must be addressed...

...The Boston Group begin their strategic analysis by noting that the U.S...

...What are the cheapest ways to meet those goals...

...Administration and maintenance would be trimmed, too...

...scale-down incite a Soviet build-up, the policy could be quickly reversed...

...defense spending...

...arms in Germany, improving nato coordination, and standardizing weapons...

...defense spending is excessive, mainly because it tries to do too many things—including some that should not be done at all...

...Many details of the Boston Group's arguments are subject to dispute, as they concede, or could be overturned by events...

...And the likelihood of the Warsaw Pact countries mounting a coordinated putsch into the West is deemed similarly remote...

...The one that is perhaps most marring results, ironically, from the authors' global perspective: Their overview fails to take into account the fears of individual citizens...

...Americans have for years heard arguments about single weapons or weapon systems—the ABM, the B-l, the Cruise Missile...

...military as the defense of the territorial United States, Western Europe, Japan, and Israel, the authors argue that America and its allies actually would be safer if we spent less on research, weapons and troops...

...They remind us that "at the beginning of the 20th century the United States did not rank militarily even among the first half-dozen major powers...

...Finally, military research and development and arms sales would be sharply curtailed in the hopes of slowing down the worldwide growth of war weapons...

...While many liberal voters and congressmen would pobably be willing to risk one unilateral defense cut in an attempt to encourage international disarmament, they are likely to get a little queasy if called upon to approve a whole series of them...

...Today, "the U.S...

...rarely is the nonprofessional able to find informed, critical discussion of the whole military budget...

...Finally, the text suffers from having been written by committee, and the generous use of graphs and charts is not as helpful as it might be...

...On their part,the authors self-consciously hope the work will be read by professionals in the Defense Department...

...Borrowing from the less-is-more and zero-base-budgeting movements, the authors scrutinized the U.S...

...Then they boldly state that the "triade" concept—a defense plan that relies on air, sea and land-launched nuclear missiles —is "rapidly becoming obsolete," without offering much supporting evidence or otherwise giving this the explanation it demands...

...But they also recommend withdrawing the Marines, most light divisions, slightly more than one full heavy division, and most nuclear weapons—leaving a force, they claim, that would still be capable of mounting a withering defense against any Warsaw attack...

...Maintaining a large force, they contend, invites—even encourages—U.S...

...Specifically, the Boston Group proposes military budget reductions of roughly 40 per cent—to about $73 billion—over a period of five to 10 years...

...forces can be assumed to be higher"—an assumption many people would strongly reject...

...But despite the marshalling of facts, the good sense and the provocative ideas, the Boston Study Group's effort has serious shortcomings...

...In other areas, the theme is the same: a gradual phase-out of all that is redundant or provocative...

...In the foreseeable future, the Boston Group observes, the Allies simply are not going to burst through the Iron Curtain and start liberating Eastern Europe, even if invited...

...The explanatory list is essential to understanding the report...

...Since there is no way to stop incoming Russian nukes, and since neither Canada nor Mexico is about to invade us, it turns out that most of the better than $120 billion earmarked for the Pentagon goes to pay and equip "General Purpose Forces"—troops used for everything from meeting the Red Army along the Danube to helping one Yemen against another...

...Perhaps in recognition that this is clearly open to debate, it is suggested that the withdrawals be ever so gradual...

...Finally, the authors conclude that our defense strategy needs rethinking...

...The long-sighted approach also allows the authors to bring to light some valuable information...

...Many of the entries are familiar: DMZ, nato, mtrv...

...Again, while discussing the nato-Warsaw Part standoff, the authors simply state that "the quality of U.S...

...In addition, they find expenditures bloated by a budget process that can hardly resist the momentum of old programs and allows too many concessions to interservice rivalry...

...There seems little chance, however, that it will trigger an about-face in the Pentagon, even assuming it is taken seriously...

...military adventurism...

...Still, their decision to look at policies and consider alternatives in full context is of special value...

...and some are inescapable anomalies: harm (High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile), sage (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment...