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Show Transcript Cutting The Military Price Tag
Produced February 7, 1993
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| NARRATOR: Most Americans don't realize that we still spend almost $300 billion each year on the military. INTERVIEWER: Could you take a guess as to how much we are expected to spend on the military this year? MAN-on-the-Street: I'm not too informed, but I would guess about a hundred billion. MAN-on-the-Street: A rough guess, I would -- somewhere a couple of billion dollars, I'm sure. WOMAN-on-the-Street: In dollar terms. INTERVIEWER: Um-hm. Same WOMAN-on-the-Street: Five hundred billion. WOMAN-on-the-Street: A million dollars?. MAN-on-the Street: About a hundred billion? NARRATOR: A growing number of Americans favor smaller U.S. military forces and spending much less than $300 billion a year on the military. MAN-on-the-Street: Oh wow, that's extremely too much money. MAN-on-the-Street: I think so too, considering, you know, the other problems that we're having now. INTERVIEWER: You don't have a "B" in your vocabulary for billion? WOMAN-on-the-Street: A billion dollars? INTERVIEWER: How about $290 billion? Same WOMAN-on-the-Street: Really. This year? INTERVIEWER: This year. Same WOMAN-on-the-Street: Wow! That's a lot of money. NARRATOR: Most Americans would agree that we must spend whatever is necessary to defend the United States. But what is necessary in today's world to defend the United States? ["AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" program introduction.] Admiral GENE LaROCQUE: Welcome once again to "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR." In the weeks and months ahead, very important decisions will be made here in Washington which will affect the lives of all Americans. Perhaps the most important decision to be made is the size, composition, and the role of our military forces in the future and, of course, the cost of those forces. Our program is about that subject today and I think you'll find it very interesting. NARRATOR: Many people expect President Clinton to make big cuts in military spending. But despite all the rhetoric about change, big military budgets are going to be around for years to come. So are big government spending deficits. Military spending of almost $6 billion-a-week contributes heavily to our growing debt, now over $4 trillion. Just to buy what the Pentagon wants over the next five years may cost over $150 billion more than the Pentagon has planned, according to a recent report by the government's General Accounting Office. Dr. Dov Zakheim has earned a reputation as a well-informed analyst during a high level career in military affairs. For six years, he served as Deputy Under-Secretary of Defense for Planning and Resources in the Reagan administration. He is currently a consultant to the Pentagon. Dr. DOV ZAKHEIM: There's no question that if you're going to reduce the deficit, the defense budget has to kick in. Nobody will argue against that, and the question is how much is kicks in. If you're not going to raise taxes and you're not going to cut defense, you're going to have a tough time reducing the deficit, if everything else gets spent the same way as it has in the past. Remember, we're paying a fortune, almost the size of the defense budget, just to pay our interest on the national debt. NARRATOR: Dr. Zakheim cautions that we must spend whatever is necessary to defend our country. Dr. ZAKHEIM: Ultimately, you don't buy the military and you don't buy your forces for economic reasons. You buy them to defend the country, much as you buy an insurance policy to hedge against the future, not for economic reasons. NARRATOR: The trick is to avoid spending more than neces- sary on the military. Excess spending can actually weaken US security by taking resources from the economic and social elements of our national strength. President Eisenhower noted long ago, "We need adequate defense, but every arms dollar we spend above adequacy has a long term weakening effect upon the nation and its security." NARRATOR: Deciding how much to spend on the military is a three-step process. First, you decide what missions you want the military to perform. Then you determine the forces needed to carry out these tasks. Finally, you calculate how much those forces cost. Dr. ZAKHEIM: We should start with where we want to be in the world, why we want to be there, and what it'll take to defend our interests. And only then figure out the forces that we need, and then cost those forces. NARRATOR: What are the missions of the military? In an effort to clarify the roles of our armed forces, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, recently set forth his views in a document entitled National Military Strategy. The missions can be described as: -- Defend the United States -- Defend our territories -- Rescue Americans in foreign countries -- Defend friendly countries that are threatened and cannot defend themselves, and -- Intervene in the Third World to stop aggression, drugs and terrorism, and to ensure access to energy, oil and minerals. The mission of defending the United States and its territories is relatively simple. Russia and a few other coun- tries have nuclear weapons that could reach the United States homeland, but no nuclear country is an enemy of the United States today. No nation in the world has the military capability to mount an invasion by sea and our neighbors, Canada and Mexico, don't want to. Evacuation of US citizens trapped in foreign countries is a tiny military mission. The need to defend our friends in Europe and Japan has almost vanished. None of them are under threat of attack. The Warsaw Pact has dissolved, Western Europe is integrating ever more closely, and a new Franco-German military command has been formed. Dr. John Steinbruner, director of Foreign Policy Studies as the prestigious Brookings Institution in Washington, has been widely praised for his promotion of new thinking about US foreign policy. Dr. JOHN STEINBRUNER: We've been operating a military establishment for 40 years that's dedicated to active military confrontation against an enemy believed to be capable of attack-ing on short notice, in large scale, on the ground in Europe and strategically. We no longer have such an enemy and yet, we've not revised the fundamental method. We're still preserving the mili-tary establishment for active confrontation against a now-undefined enemy, again on short notice. NARRATOR: Japan has no enemies, only countries competing for its trade and investment capital. If some threat did develop, Japan and Western Europe are militarily and economically capable of defending themselves. On the Korean Peninsula, tensions between North and South Korea have lessened dramatically. South Korea's large and powerful military forces are now capable of defending against the North. North Korea's economy has stagnated, while South Korea has developed industrial and technological might. When the United States first undertook to defend Europe and Japan after World War II, and then South Korea, they were poor and weak. Today, they are all prosperous and heavily armed. General Powell's case for intervention in the Third World is at the heart of the military's future missions, but it has not received enough public discussion. Don Snider's distinguished military career has stretched from the infantry in Vietnam to the National Security Council in the White House. He is now using his past experience in key military planning posts to produce well-regarded military analysis for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. DON SNIDER: The process should be to answer the political questions, which are value questions. There's one central ques-tion that needs to be readdressed now that we're at the end of the cold war: What does America want to do in the world? What role should the United States have? Then you answer the second political question: As we fulfill that role, what part do you want military force to play? NARRATOR: Citizens, Congress and President Clinton will need to answer these fundamental questions before spending a lot more money on forces to fight in the Third World. NARRATOR: What forces are needed to accomplish the Pentagon's missions? Unfortunately, General Powell did not specifically allocate US military forces to the different tasks he described. But a group of senior retired military officers at the Center for Defense Information independently examined what forces would be required. Their study, based on their expertise as former Pentagon military planners, found that the military missions could be performed with smaller forces than the Pentagon wants to keep. The forces would cost close to $200 billion a year. The study concluded that the current force level of 2.8 million men and women in the active and reserve forces could be reduced to one million men and women in the active forces and one million reserve troops, 800,000 fewer than the Bush admin- istration planned. The $200 billion alternative force would include 18 Army and Marine active and reserve divisions, 24 Air Force and Marine fighter wings of about 72 aircraft each, 324 Navy combat ships, and a fleet of submarines carrying nuclear missiles. Defense of the United States and its territories would be accomplished with small ground and air forces and nuclear missile submarines. Defense against missile attack on the United States is not a significant problem today and would be limited to research. Small Marine amphibious forces are required for opera-tions to rescue Americans trapped in foreign fighting. US forces would be based almost entirely in the United States. Large airlift and sealift units would be available to transport combat forces quickly to foreign countries, if neces- sary. Occasions when friendly countries were under attack, unable to defend themselves, and US military participation was essential are likely to be rare. Some think we should still keep forces in Europe, not so much for military purposes as for political reasons. Mr. SNIDER: We can withdraw a significant number of troops from Europe. And the specific question I addressed was how low can we go. And, again, the answer for the next five-to-seven years, since we do not have extant military threats, the answer has to be answered politically. How much do we want to influence our allies by showing visibly a commitment to their security and the continued democra-tization of Eastern Europe? My answer was we could go to half the level we have now, and then we should negotiate very hard on who pays the bill. NARRATOR: A portion of the $200 billion force could perform and operation comparable in size and scope to the war against Iraq. Half-a-million troops went to the Middle East to fight Iraq, and this alternative proposal would keep one million people in the active force alone. Rep. LES ASPIN (D-WI), Secretary of Defense-designate (7 January '93, confirmation hearings before Senate Armed Services Committee): "You look out in the world and you say is there anything else out there that would likely to require a force bigger than the force we used in Desert Storm. And frankly, I don't see it at the moment." NARRATOR: Dov Zakheim worries that a $200 billion military would not be adequate. Dr. ZAKHEIM: If we then were to cut our money for forces from approximately the current $275 billion level to 200 billion-a-year, you are seriously degrading the capabilities we have. It seems to me, at $200 billion a year, we would have trouble conducting the kind of Desert Storm operation that was very successful two years ago. If you want to do something more than that -- And again, I bring you back to the fact that we may be finding ourselves in Somalia, Bosnia and Iraq all at the same time. And this has happened before, by the way. This isn't just speculation. We were operating in Grenada and in Lebanon at the very same time, as we still managed to have troops in East Asia, and Korea, and in Europe. We find ourselves very often with simultaneous pulls on our forces. You just would not be able to do that and fight some kind of war in the Middle East. NARRATOR: Yet this leaner force would still be the world's most powerful military by a substantial margin. The United States now can pick and choose when, where and whom to fight. And, of course, we can decide that it is not necessary to fight at all. Despite the tragedies in Yugoslavia and Somalia that dominate the news, some long-running wars in El Salvador and Ethiopia have ended and several others are cooling off. The United Nations is gaining experience damping down conflicts around the world. One advantage to maintaining a smaller military force is that other countries would feel less threatened by US military might. Dr. STEINBRUNER: There is some danger that if we are perceived to be maintaining an establishment that's unreasonably large, that we will become the focus for everyone's national military development, the test against which they build their own forces. NARRATOR: Some observers want to make sure that if we do choose a $200 billion force we don't get there too quickly. Mr. SNIDER: One of the concerns that I think should be addressed is the pace of the build-down from the human context. You don't create a non-commissioned officer corps in anything less than 15 years. You don't create a professional officer corps that's trained in war-fighting in anything less than eight or nine years. And then if you talk about the generalship of the war, it's 25 years. So, one of my concerns, as someone who's spent a lot of years in the infantry, is that when you think build-down, it's not nearly as important where the end point is as how fast you go down. NARRATOR: The cost of a powerful, leaner alternative military force, $200 billion, was not chosen arbitrarily. Rather than picking the figure first and then matching forces to it, the forces needed to accomplish the tasks set forth by General Powell's National Military Strategy were assessed, then their costs calculated. A $200 billion military would cost about a third less than what we're spending now, but it would still provide a lot of bang for the buck. Britain, France, Germany and Japan, which have the world's most powerful militaries aside from the now-defunct Soviet Union, each spend just $30- to $40 billion a year on their forces. We asked some observers if a $200 billion force would be adequate. Dr. ZAKHEIM: I believe it wouldn't. People need to under-stand that we have to spend more money just to stand still. It sounds strange, but if you look at the rest of life -- health care costs, education costs -- everything seems to be going up constantly in real terms, not in just inflationary terms. INTERVIEWER: Can a $200 billion-a-year military perform the broad missions envisioned by the Pentagon? Dr. STEINBRUNER: It certainly can. The Pentagon has specified a whole range of hypothetical contingencies, not as predictions about what would happen, but as scenarios to test US military capability. If you go look at the details of all those contingencies, it's very clear that forces much lower than they are proposing to keep could respond very well to all those con-tingencies. NARRATOR: For some citizens, rising costs in health and education provide more reasons to shift spending from the mili-tary to other priorities. WOMAN-on-the-Street: Well, we really have to fix our educational system and we have to do better by the children of this country. In terms of military spending, we can save a lot by closing bases that aren't needed. We just have to have a tighter, more efficient force. YOUNG MAN-on-the-Street: I think I would like to spend the money rather in some more places like child care, health care, centers for people who need a place to stay, like kids on the street who are being confronted by drugs. WOMAN-on-the-Street: Our infrastructure is so badly in need, and that's -- Yes, infrastructure and education. NARRATOR: Where would the savings come from? Withdrawing the 300,000 troops in Europe, Japan and Korea and demobilizing those no longer needed could free billions of dollars for other uses. Equipping, training, supplying and paying the troops in Europe alone cost nearly $50 billion in 1992. Today the United States stations an Army division in Korea; a Marine division, amphibious assault ships and an air-craft carrier group in Japan; and air units in both countries. These forces in East Asia cost over $10 billion each year. Let- ting these countries' powerful militaries take responsibility for their defense and phasing out US forces could save billions. US military personnel costs make up about a quarter of military spending. Limiting the force to a million active troops and a million reserve personnel would lower payroll costs by billions of collars. Some experts point to duplication of effort by the different armed services as a source of unnecessary spending. Mr. SNIDER: Where I would like to see us eliminate the redundancies are in the common functions before you get to combat: Training, pilot training, the maintenance of aircraft, the general depot maintenance. There are significant redundancies in what we call military infrastructure. I'm not sure there are as many redundancies in the active combat forces. NARRATOR: The best way to avoid wasting money on extremely expensive and unneeded new weapons is to halt them before billions have been sunk into their research and development. Six aircraft types designed during the cold war will cost only $7 billion during 1993, but to buy them all in the years ahead will cost a whopping $432 billion. Many new weapons meant to fight the Soviet Union are still being developed despite the break-up of the Soviet Union. The General Accounting Office has identified close to 100 major new weapons now under development by the Pentagon that will end up costing over $1 trillion. Taxpayers may be unwilling to fund so many new weapons. WOMAN-on-the-Street: My impression is that -- I come from a military family and I think that defense spending really became very excessive and, over the last several administrations, I think there was just too much expenditure on the hardware. And I do see that there's been an effort made to reduce military spending, but I still think that what's happening is we're still overly committed to purchasing exotic hardware that is outdated, overrated many times, and I really feel what's being shortchanged is the human factor. NARRATOR: With no Warsaw Pact left to launch a major short-warning attack on Western Europe, reserve forces can be relied on more in what the military calls the "Total Force" of active and reserve forces. Training can be upgraded as necessary to improve combat performance of reserve units. The advantage of reserve units is that they can cost as little as one-third as much as their active counterparts, according to a Pentagon report to Congress. NARRATOR: A $200 billion force of one million active and one million reserve personnel is one alternative the new admin- istration can choose to pursue. But if President Clinton sends US forces into many new foreign disputes, costs will rise. The pres-ident will be pressed to intervene in tough military situations like the former Yugoslavia. Dr. ZAKHEIM: I'm one of those people who believes that we should use air power against Serbia. I believe we should use it for the simple reason that, otherwise, the Eastern Europeans and others might consider us irrelevant and we're not there just to have parades in Western Europe. NARRATOR: Secretary of Defense Les Aspin seems willing to use force readily even when the United States is not endangered. (Excerpt from January 7, 1993 Confirmation Hearing of Secretary of Defense-designate, Rep. Les Aspin.) Senator WILLIAM COHEN (R-ME): Chairman Aspin, you agreed, I take it, with the formulation of President Bush, in terms of using force, that you would use force when -- you could use force when vital interests are not at stake. You agree with that parti-cular aspect? You could use force even when vital interests are not at stake. Rep. LES ASPIN (D-WI): When vital interests are not as stake? Yes. Senator COHEN: And the corollary is that you could use diplomacy or non-military means when vital interests are, in fact, at stake. Rep. ASPIN: No question. Senator COHEN: In Somalia, I think we'd all agree, vital interests are not at stake; it's a matter of conscience. Rep. ASPIN: Yes. Senator COHEN: In Bosnia, your statement indicates that you would put that also in the category of conscience. I think you said, "Ethnic and religious violence in the former Yugoslavia threatens the peace of the region and provokes calls for action based on conscience." Rep. ASPIN: Yes. I think there's more of a national interest at stake in Bosnia than there is in Somalia... NARRATOR: As chairman of the House Armed Services Com- mittee, Rep. Aspin developed alternative force proposals and endorsed one that he called "Option C." He estimated this force of 1.4 million active personnel and 900,000 reservists would cost about $230 billion if it were bought today. The force would be able to conduct one war like the one against Iraq; a separate air war as big as in the Iraq war, but in Korea; an intervention similar to the one helping the Kurds of northern Iraq; and an operation like the invasion of Panama, all at the same time. But each additional intervention undertaken could add billions to military spending. The Iraq war cost an extra $61 billion above regular military spending. The Pentagon estimates the intervention in Somalia costs about $140 million every month. A series of foreign interventions would undercut efforts to bring down the federal spending deficit and divert the Clinton administration's close focus on the economy. A more constructive foreign policy approach would be for President Clinton to pursue a strategy of preventing out- breaks of war, rather than just preparing to fight wars after they have broken out. John Steinbruner argues that the end of cold war hostilities makes possible a new framework of interna-tional relations that would increase everyone's security. Dr. STEINBRUNER: In my opinion, it's entirely feasible to work out a security arrangement that enables us to have better security than we now do at lower cost, and the cost would be substantially -- At the end of a ten-year period of transition, it would be substantially below $200 billion-a-year in constant dollars. INTERVIEWER: How much below do you think? Dr. STEINBRUNER: I think it's possible to go down to the range of 130- to 150 billion in constant dollars, after a ten-year period of transition. NARRATOR: It's too early to tell where the Clinton admin-istration is headed, but it's already clear that political and economic pressures will make it difficult to introduce far-reaching changes in the military program inherited from the Bush administration. Rep. ASPIN (from confirmation hearings): "The current situation in Congress right now is not a split between hawks and doves, between liberals and conservatives, between Democrats and Republicans, it's between those people that have military bases and facilities and things in their districts and those that don't." NARRATOR: Things haven't yet changed since the last admin-istration. DICK CHENEY, former Secretary of Defense, 1989-93 (before congressional committee): "Congress has let me cancel a few programs. But you've squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don't fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements. You've directed me to buy the V-22, a program I don't need." NARRATOR: Despite Clinton's election on a promise of change and increasing calls for spending on domestic priorities, deci-sions about military spending may continue to be based more on backroom politics than analysis of military needs. Unless, of course, citizens make their views heard. WOMAN-on-the-Street: We're spending far, far too much. I think that the danger has been reduced so greatly and I believe that we can use the money in cutting down the military in the transition to provide better jobs for those who will be impacted. Admiral LaROCQUE: Well, in listening to these experts, it's pretty obvious that there is general agreement that some changes ought to be made in our military establishment. Most people seem to agree that we could get along with a smaller military estab-lishment than we have today. There's very little agreement, however, as to exactly what the role and mission of our military forces should be in the future, nor is there much agreement on how much money we should continue to spend for the military. These decisions will be made in the near future and a lot will depend on what the attitude of the American public is towards the military establishment and the other needs in our domestic economy. I hope you found the program interesting. And until next time, for "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I'm Gene LaRocque. Price: $39
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