Defense Debate
Etzold, Thomas H.
Defense Debate DEFENSE OR DELUSION? AMERICA'S MILITARY IN THE 1980s by Thomas H. Etzold Harper & Row. 259 pp. $14.95. In many ways Thomas Etzold's Defense or Delusion? resembles National Defense,...
...And you have to be about my size...
...After inspecting a captured Russian tank, the late General Creighton Abrams remarked that "it didn't have all the fancy things the colonels want in our tanks...
...He teaches strategy at the Naval War College, and while his general attitude toward the military is unabashedly gung-ho, he does have a considerable command of the details of his subject...
...Regrettably, there is every reason to agree with Etzold that the abortive Iranian rescue mission "raised disturbing questions about American military ability to plan and execute even a small operation...
...In contrast to Fallows, an able professional writer but a mere amateur when it comes to military matters, Etzold is a specialist...
...Conflicting American assessments of Russian equipment tend to support that conclusion...
...Etzold expounds the increasingly popular view that the U.S...
...Neither Fallows nor Etzold is prepared to see that there can be no such restoration of morale and mutual trust until there is a better national consensus about what the military is there for, and how it is to be used...
...but it could do every damn thing you want a tank to do...
...Like Fallows, Etzold proceeds from the premise that all good Americans want as strong a military as possible, suitable for use whenever and wherever their leaders say a "U.S...
...Largely for this reason, he reluctantly concludes that "better defense must be more expensive defense...
...It is as though he wants the United States to be in a position to take on the rest of the Earth...
...He presents detailed and impressive evidence on the massive attrition of tanks and other large weapons in recent Middle East wars, and he points out that small missiles costing mere thousands of dollars are able now to knock out with deadly precision large weapons costing hundreds of millions...
...weapons such as the M-l tank have suffered from disgraceful design defects, cost overruns, and reliability problems, but, in general, he believes it is "not clear whether Soviets or Americans experience more difficulty with regard to the reliability of military equipment...
...He sees the diffusion of military power not as an argument for pared military commitments and enhanced arms control efforts but as a reason for enormously greater defense outlays...
...Etzold concedes that many U.S...
...But unlike other scholars who have concluded from such facts that big weapons are a waste of money and a delusion, Etzold argues that we have to build even more of them, apparently so that there will be some left after most have been knocked out of action...
...In this matter, and others as well, Etzold sometimes draws odd conclusions from his own data...
...interest" is at stake...
...Etzold is skeptical about conscription because it would not solve the main problem driving up costs—retention of pilots, nuclear engineers, computer jocks, and other skilled personnel...
...Fallows made much of the fact, with reason, that only four generals were killed in Vietnam—a war that claimed the lives of 57,000 GIs...
...Fallows sees it as a top priority to "restore the military spirit, by strengthening bonds of trust, sacrifice, and support" within the military ranks and "similar bonds of support and respect between the army and the nation it represents...
...But in 1975, another American general gave a Congressional committee a contrary view: "I have been in a T-62," he said, "and it has a very cramped turret, and you have to be a left-handed midget because you have to load the darn thing from the wrong side of the breech...
...The naval expansion program is the most expensive part of the Administration's $1.6 trillion defense program and the most open to criticism, since carriers (and other big weapons platforms of all kinds) are increasingly vulnerable to guided missiles...
...Etzold has particularly interesting things to say about the corruption of the weapons testing process, where "results" frequently are skewed to suit the interests of the services and their contractors...
...This is an important observation in view of the Reagan Administration's plan to build a 600-ship Navy, centered around three new carrier task forces...
...Etzold worries about "the malaise that in peacetime transforms warriors into bureaucrats...
...William Sweet (William Sweet is a staff writer for Editorial Research Reports/Congressional Quarterly...
...If they run out of left-handed midgets in the Soviet Union, they are going to be in big trouble...
...Fallows seems to favor reintroduction of the draft, for example, not only because of mounting personnel costs, but also because "we will very soon reach the point at which almost no educated white people . . . will have had any first-hand exposure to the military...
...He maintains, for example, that in naval war games, "an unwritten rule prohibits the sinking of an American aircraft carrier...
...No wonder both Fallows and Etzold lay great weight on what they perceive as a decline in military morale...
...resembles National Defense, the book by James Fallows that has attracted wide attention during the past year (see The Progressive, October 1981...
...military has become caught up in a mania for high-technology equipment, a theme developed persuasively by Fallows...
...There is every reason to ask, in fact, whether the country's top brass has the guts to stand up to the political leadership, on technical grounds, when an operation is plainly unworkable and ill-considered...
...Nonetheless, Etzold is inclined to think that sophisticated weapons are here to stay...
...Like Fallows, Etzold can be read with appreciation even by people who do not share his point of view...
...In many instances, he seems more judicious than Fallows and less inclined to follow fads in military writing...
...His reasoning about global military expenditures is strikingly similar...
Vol. 46 • July 1982 • No. 7
