symposium

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 2, 2000 | by Frank J. Gaffney, | Michael O'Hanlon

Q: Will the next president inherit an armed forces in decline?

Yes: The Clinton team will leave an undermanned, underequipped military force.

Presidential elections are a unique, quadrennial opportunity to address major public-policy issues -- and to hire somebody who will do something about them.

For example, in the course of Campaign 2000 we have had candidate after candidate describe their commitment to "save Social Security." This focus reflects not only the political salience of the issue in a close race. It also underscores the extent to which the problems facing a pension system that is unlikely to meet its obligations to an aging baby-boomer population no longer is disputable and the necessity of addressing the problem no longer is avoidable.

For many years, a no less serious crisis -- what might be called the need to "save national security" -- has gone unaddressed. Until recently, the public largely has been kept in the dark about the deleterious effect a decade of inadequate defense spending has had on the condition of the U.S. military and its ability to safeguard the nation and its interests, both today and tomorrow. Suddenly, this sleeper issue is front-page news. Unfortunately, unlike the Social Security debate, some -- notably Vice President Al Gore and his surrogates -- until recently refused even to acknowledge that a problem exists.

On September 6, however, in a transparent effort to outbid Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the vice president offered to spend $100 billion over 10 years to expand military pay, benefits and other measures. The size and timing of this afterthought appear to have more to do with defending Gore's record against legitimate GOP attacks than it does with defending the country.

The reason is not hard to fathom. Traditionally, Democrats have been seen by the public to be weak on defense. When Republicans have had the wit and the political will to make national security an issue in national elections, the GOP generally has benefited at the polls.

It is no accident that one of the central and most successful aspects of the Clinton/Gore effort to market their team as "New Democrats" was that -- unlike the party of George McGovern, Michael Dukakis and Fritz Mondale they would respect and sustain the nation's military.

The trouble is that, once in office, the so-called New Democrats did not perform as they had promised. By virtually any objective standard, the U.S. military has been hollowed out by the Clinton/Gore administration. The continuing refusal of Gore and his supporters to acknowledge this fact not only is a serious disservice to the men and women who serve in uniform today. To the extent that their denials contribute to public confusion and, therefore, to an attendant failure to engender a popular mandate in this election year for taking corrective action, Gore and Company's dissembling likely will prove a tragedy for those who will put their lives on the line for the country in the years ahead -- and, indeed, for the nation they may be asked to die to protect.

How do you measure a military "in decline"? There are, of course, numerous ways to assess the current condition of our armed forces. As demonstrated by the debate precipitated by Bush's critique at the Republican convention -- based on outdated statistics about the lack of readiness of two out of 10 active-duty combat divisions -- the least informative measure may be that derived from inherently-arbitrary "Defense Department" standards.

For one thing, the standards may not be entirely relevant to the actual combat capability of a force on any given day. Trends are more instructive. For another, standards can be changed -- as the Clinton/Gore Pentagon has done from time to time -- to try to address shortfalls in the readiness of units and the inability of some of the services to recruit the required number of quality personnel to replace those choosing not to reenlist.

More useful insights into the real state of the U.S. military can be found in other indicators. These include:

* Performance in combat: The military campaign to end Serb predations in Kosovo showcased the effects of a decade of shrinking force structure, reduced training hours, inadequate procurement of spare parts and a wholesale failure to modernize the force.

It takes nothing away from the valor and true grit of the men and women who performed combat missions over and in Kosovo and that struck heavily defended targets in Serbia proper to say that they were severely hampered by attack helicopters that could not be put into operation, forces that could not be brought to bear in a timely fashion and depleted inventories of cruise missiles and other precision-guided munitions. These factors, together with politically dictated impediments (such as White House and allied governments' micro-management of the target lists and highly restrictive rules of engagement), enabled most Serb forces in Kosovo to withdraw unscathed. Worse yet, mounting even this relatively minor campaign took a tremendous toll on the U.S. military. It would have been hard-pressed to conduct a second combat operation of any appreciable size elsewhere while this campaign was under way.