Q: is the military drawdown endangering U.S. national security?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 28, 1998 | by Flloyd Spence, | Eugene J. Carroll

Yes: Shaved budgets and creeping missions have stretched U.S. forces too thin.

Fourteen consecutive years of declining defense budgets and more than a decade of reductions in military-force structure has taken its toll on America's defense capability.

The fiscal 1999 defense-budget request represents the 14th consecutive year of real decline in defense spending that has occurred under administrations and congressional majorities of both parties. This dramatic decline in resources has made it exceedingly difficult to maintain our nation's high-quality, all-volunteer force, and the consequent risk to the viability of our military and to the nation's security is growing everyday.

During the last decade, the U.S. military has shrunk from approximately 2.2 million active-duty service members to 1.4 million active-duty soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. In fact, since the Persian Gulf War, Army divisions have been reduced from 18 to 10, Navy ships cut from 547 to 346 and Air Force fighter wings reduced from 36 to 19.

Yet, at the same time our military forces continue to shrink, they are being called upon to do more all over the world. For instance, the Army, which conducted 10 operational events outside of normal training and alliance commitments during the 31-year period of 1960-1991, has conducted 26 operational events since 1991. The Marine Corps, which undertook 15 contingency operations between 1982 and 1989, has conducted 62 such operations since the fall of the Berlin Wall. And, for the first time, the Air Force is experiencing frequent, long-term deployments.

Despite continued reductions in force structure and budgets, the national military strategy still calls for the nation's military to be able to fight and win two major-theater wars at the same time. With the threats to U.S. national interests on the rise from Asia to the Middle East, the requirement for our military to be capable enough to fight and win two wars makes perfect sense. Yet I remain skeptical that today's military could conduct even one Operation Desert Storm-type war today with the same speed, effectiveness and relatively low loss of life that it did just a few short years ago. In fact, the nation's military leader ship recently has concluded that the level of risk associated with the U.S. military's ability to execute the national military strategy is moderate to high.

While the fall of the Berlin Wall certainly brought with it an opportunity to adjust the nation's Cold War defense structure, the threats and challenges America confronts today and the resulting pressures they have placed on a still-shrinking U.S. military have been seriously underestimated. At this critical point in history, the mismatch between the nation's military strategy and the resources required to implement it is growing. Consequently, a broad range of quality-of-life, readiness and modernization shortfalls have developed that, if left unchecked, threaten the long-term viability of today's all-volunteer force. Compelling our men and women in uniform to do more with less risks a return to a hollow military and jeopardizes America's ability effectively to protect and promote its national interests around the world.

Make no mistake, the men and women who serve in uniform today comprise the finest military force in the world. Yet as the pace of military operations increases against a backdrop of declining resources, the well-being of our all-volunteer force--a force that took a generation to build after the Vietnam War--is under siege and in trouble. The warning signs have been evident for years.

Some contend that the answer to these shortfalls and mismatches is more rigorous Pentagon reform and, of course, additional base closings. But the universal appeal and necessity of reform does not translate into timely solutions to budget shortfalls. In fact, despite several years of aggressive Pentagon reform, it is apparent that even if the most optimistic estimates of reform-generated savings materialize, they will fall far short of adequately addressing underfunded quality of life, readiness and modernization requirements in the years ahead.

This certainly is true regarding base closings. For the sake of argument, suppose that Congress were to put aside its legitimate and bipartisan concerns about the integrity of the base realignment and closure, or BRAC, process following the president's widely perceived politicization of that process in 1995 and were to support the Clinton administration's request to proceed with two additional base-closure rounds in 2001 and 2005. The truth is, even if these additional BRAC rounds proceeded legitimately and apolitically, under the most optimistic of would be no savings scenarios there until the latter part of next decade or beyond. In fact, closing additional bases will require significant budget increases in the five years or so following any such decision. If you also consider the billions of dollars in environmental-cleanup costs associated with additional base closings, the prospect of significant net savings to future defense budgets is even gloomier.