NARRATOR: The enemy. The threat. It used to be clear. The enemy was communism. The threat was Soviet military power. Preparing a military budget was relatively simple.

Secretary of Defense DICK CHENEY (1989-93):

"It used to be when you prepared a plan around here, nobody cared very much, because it didn't embody much change. Commies were commies, you know, there was a certain predict-ability about problems in the world and you weren't going to undergo fundamental change in our strategy in Europe, etc."

NARRATOR: "Commies were commies." The Defense Department knew what its job was: Prepare to fight World War III against the Soviet military.

A huge permanent military establishment was built. A four decade-long national security emergency affected all facets of our life. There was no war with the Soviet, but real wars were fought to halt the spread of communism. Today, that old familiar world is gone.

Who's the enemy now? What's the threat?

["AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" program introduction.]

Admiral GENE LaROCQUE: Welcome once again to "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR."

During my many years in the Pentagon developing war plans and advising on the size and composition of our military forces and how much money we should spend for the military, it was relatively easy because we knew who the enemy was. Today, the enemy is much more elusive, difficult to identify. Our program is on that subject today and I know you'll find it interesting.

NARRATOR: For more than 50 years Americans were mobilized to combat enemies around the world. First in World War II and then in the cold war, our sense of national purpose was deter- mined by our struggles with ominous external dangers and enemies large and small. Who was the enemy?

Let's take a walk down memory lane in our video history of the threat. Let's remember our old fears, our old nightmares.

From US Army film, "Know Your Enemy: Japan" (1945): "So, let's see what kind of these Japanese really are. First, let's examine a typical Japanese soldier. His average height is five feet, three inches. His average weight, 117 pounds. He and his brother soldiers are as much alike as photographic prints off the same negative."

Narrator of second video: "Fanatic Jap detachments who are bent on suicide rather than honorable surrender."

From Nazi Propaganda film: (Speech by Hitler, in German.) "And the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler (German phrase, crowd responding.)"

From Newsreel film: "In the background was the growing struggle between two great powers to shape the postwar world. Soviet Russia was expansively stabbing westward, knifing into nations left empty by war. On orders from the Kremlin, Russia had launched one of history's most drastic political, moral and economic wars, a cold war. The United States was obliged to help Europe safeguard its traditional freedoms and the independence of its nations."

President HARRY TRUMAN: "The cause of freedom is being challenged throughout the world today by the forces of imperialistic communism. This is a struggle above all else for the minds of man."

Unknown Commentator: "The communists are red fascists. Soviet imperialism has replaced Nazi imperialism as a threat to the peace of the world."

Narrator on sixth video: "The atom bomb explodes again in the headlines of the world."

From Newsreel: "At the United Nations, Soviet representa- tive Andrei Vishinsky refused to comment and stalked coldly into the assembly building."

Narrator on eighth video: "If the communist bloc does attack, our radar sites and observers will sound the alert. But some will get through to your home."

("Duck and Cover" song.)

From Newsreel: "The Chinese Red armies, numbering hundreds of thousands, swarmed over the frontier against thinly held United Nations positions. Confronted by overwhelming numbers, UN armies were forced into inevitable retreat, while men wondered whether Red China would touch off World War III."

J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director: "Communism, in reality, is not a political party. It is a way of life, an evil and malignant way of life. It reveals a condition akin to disease that spreads like an epidemic. And like an epidemic, a quarantine is necessary to keep it from infecting this nation."

Senator JOE McCARTHY: "One communist on the faculty of one university is one communist too many."

From Newsreel: "Says Mr. K., the Soviets will overtake America and then wave bye-bye."

From Newsreel: "The United States issues a white paper indicting North Vietnam for aggression in Southeast Asia. The US white paper on the extent of Red aid to the rebels is a real thing in South Vietnam. They have the proof right before their eyes."

Unknown Commentator: "If we lose Indochina, we will lose the Pacific, and we'll be an island in a communist sea."

President RICHARD NIXON: "If the United States now were to throw in the towel and come home, and the communists took over South Vietnam, the United States would suffer a blow."

President RONALD REAGAN: "Because they sometimes speak in soothing tones of brotherhood and peace, because like other dictators before them, they're always making their 'final terri-torial demand,' some would have us accept them at their word and accommodate ourselves to their aggressive impulses. But if history teaches anything, it teaches that simpleminded appease-ment or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly."

NARRATOR: In our history, as we have seen, some threats were serious, but others were overstated. The collapse of the Soviet Union exposed the fatal weaknesses of a country that had a short time earlier appeared invincible to many American politi-cians and military figures.

Hedrick Smith is one of America's leading experts on Russia and the former Soviet Union. He was The New York Times bureau chief in Moscow. Hedrick Smith recently authored "The New Russians."

INTERVIEWER: At the end of the seventies, did we overesti-mate Soviet strength?

HEDRICK SMITH: I think we did. I think we overestimated the buildup at that time, yes. Again, it seems to me that it wasn't just the overestimation, but it was the failure to imagine that there was another way out other than constantly racheting up the arms race.

NARRATOR: William Colby, the distinguished former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, agrees.

WILLIAM COLBY: I think we overdid the nuclear threat, quite frankly. I think there was a mindlessness in the whole buildup of nuclear power between both the Soviets and ourselves.

NARRATOR: The problem of exaggerated American fears is not just an historical issue. William Maynes is the influential editor of Foreign Policy Magazine and a former State Department official.

INTERVIEWER: Today, do you see military or civilian leaders exaggerating the threats around us?

WILLIAM MAYNES: Yes, I do, because if they were totally honest about the lack of threats, there would be an even greater clamor for cuts in military budgets. I understand that; people want to avoid that.

NARRATOR: It's not surprising that today the US military is struggling with trying to identify who's the enemy now. Some people argue that the world is actually becoming more dangerous since the end of the cold war.

Senator JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D-CT) (1 April '93, Senate Armed Services Committee:

"If we attempted to chart the potential threats to world and American security in the next five years leading up to '98, we'd probably find that while the defense budget goes down, the threats go up."

NARRATOR: William Colby doesn't think the world is a more dangerous place.

Mr. COLBY: Absolutely not. Certainly, I think we're very fortunate human beings to have survived the last 30 years. We had 25,000 nuclear warheads aimed at us and we aimed 25,000 nuclear warheads at our adversaries. The world is nowhere near as dangerous as it was when that was going on.

INTERVIEWER: Has the level of conflict since the end of the cold war increased, decreased, or stayed the same?

Mr. COLBY: It's about the same. The difference today is that every little local conflict all over the world between one group and another or one neighbor and another is not the basis for a Soviet-American confrontation, which many of them were.

NARRATOR: Sometimes it does seem that there is more conflict now than before. However, experts who have looked care-fully at the problem conclude that the worldwide level of violence, including terrorism, is actually lower than it was a decade ago. And it certainly seems clear that US security is less endangered.

Does the United States have any enemies?

LARRY KORB: The United States does not have any specific countries who have either the desire or the military capability to directly affect the security of the United States.

Mr. MAYNES: I think it has no real enemy that can threaten, truly threaten American security.

SELIG HARRISON: I don't think that there's any country in the world today with which the United States cannot deal con-structively if our own policies are sensitive to the interests of those countries. We need not have any enemies.

NARRATOR: The loss of the Soviet enemy creates an enormous problem for the US military. Hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake because the Pentagon has lost its main recent rationale for existence.

Secretary of Defense LES ASPIN (27 March '93, DoD briefing):

"It is almost impossible to overemphasize the impor-tance of the Soviet Union in defense planning that consumed all of our attention for four, almost five decades. They were at the heart of everything we did."

NARRATOR: Some observers fear that the old Soviet danger could come back. Yet former Defense Secretary Les Aspin doesn't think so.

Secretary ASPIN (same briefing):

"There are certain things that have changed that are irreversible here. The Warsaw Pact is gone. There's no way that 'Humpty-Dumpty' is going to be put back together again. The former Soviet Union is broken into lots of republics. There's no way that's going to be pulled back together again. The communist party has lost its ideology. The Russian military is going through some really very, very hard times."

NARRATOR: Former defense Secretary Aspin has taken the lead in trying to identify new enemies, new dangers. The big danger that has replaced the Soviet Union is the so-called "regional threat."

Secretary ASPIN (same briefing):

"The thing that really drives the defense budget now is the regional threats. We still have people like Saddam Hussein. We still have bad guys which have military capability. And we need to have the capability in the United States military to be able to deal with those people. There's about a half-a-dozen of them. You all can think of the same people: Libya, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, etc."

NARRATOR: But former Secretary Aspin's new threats are nowhere nearly as dangerous to the United States as the big old dangers. There is no country or set of countries in the Third World which come even close to having the military capability of the former Soviet Union. No Third World country is even as strong as Iraq, so easily defeated by the United States in 1991.

Secretary ASPIN (1 April '93, before Senate Armed Services Committee):

"If you look at the bad guys out there, there is no bad guy, with the possible exception of what happens in Russia. But the most extreme case of the bad guys out there is another Desert Storm. And there isn't anybody out there that is the kind of threat that Iraq was before Desert Storm."

NARRATOR: It seems implausible that regional threats, bad guys out there in the Third World, can be used to justify the continuation of cold war levels of military spending. Some of the bad guys may not be so bad anymore. But emotional appeals and exaggerated dangers can help persuade Americans that a huge, costly military establishment is still necessary.

In the hunt for bad guys, Islamic fundamentalists have loomed large.

Senator JAMES EXON (D-NE) (1 April '93, Senate Armed Services Committee):

"I think the rise of Islamic fundamentalism is a truly number one problem, of all the number one problems that we have to face."

NARRATOR: Informed experts take a more balanced point of view. Leon Hadar is an Israeli-born American specialist on the Middle East and former correspondent for the Jerusalem Post. He is the author of "Quagmire: America and the Middle East" and currently teaches at American University. With a billion Muslims in the world, he warns against simple generalizations.

Dr. LEON HADAR: Islam is a religion, a spiritual force. Moslems include millionaires in Indonesia -- which, by the way, people forget is the largest Moslem country in the world -- to radical terrorists in Lebanon. And it's very difficult to talk about Islam in the same way it's rather difficult to talk about Christianity or Judaism as one monolithic religion, or culture, or civilization. I think it would be a mistake to do that.

I think it would be a mistake to look at Islam as a religion, as a civilization, as a threat to the West. It is not a threat to the West.

NARRATOR: Asad Abu'Khalil is professor of Middle East politics and history at California State University. He is an authority on Islam. He identifies the important non-religious causes of fundamentalism.

Prof. ASAD ABU'KHALIL: As paradoxical as it may sound, the underlying causes of Islamic fundamentalism are not religious in nature; they are socio-economic and political. Islamic fundamen-talism is a manifestation of deepseated dissatisfaction and despair that prevail in much of Arab and Moslem societies. Islamic fundamentalism represents, rightly or wrongly, the aspirations of people in the Middle East for a better living and for a better equal share in decision-making process in government.

NARRATOR: The Pentagon and the American media have been hunting hard for new enemies, according to Leon Hadar.

Dr. HADAR: I think the American media in this post-cold war era has joined other members of the foreign policy establishment in the search for a convenient threat, for a plot to explain the political instability and the problems in the world. And, you know, "the mullahs did it" is a kind of nice explanation to the "who done it." I think, in that regard, I think the media tends to perpetuate this sense of coming Islamic threat.

NARRATOR: Asad Abu'Khalil, who was born in Lebanon and is now an American citizen, does not think that Islamic fundamenta-lism is a major military danger.

Prof. ABU'KHALIL: I don't think there is any technical military response to Islamic fundamentalism. I think the way to fight Islamic fundamentalism is through democracy and through economic prosperity and justice. Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalist leaders, like Sheik Abdul Rahman, I will argue are quite dangerous to stability and to peace. But equally, or perhaps more dangerous, are the underlying causes. More dangerous than the sheik in New York is poverty in Egypt, is repression in the Middle East, is the absence of democratic freedoms.

NARRATOR: Iran is sometimes identified as an enemy of the United States and the main supporter of Islamic fundamentalism. Leon Hadar thinks the United States can deal more constructively with Iran.

Dr. HADAR: It is in American national interests to open a dialogue with Iran and to try to establish, first of all, trade relationship and, later on, diplomatic relationship with that country. I think the regime in that country, led by President Rafsanjani, is interested especially in trade relationship with the United States. And I think that, in the long run, instead of isolating Iran, like we did with Cuba, for example, I think by opening to Iran, I think we can encourage those forces in that country that are interested from an Iranian national interest to improve relationship with the West and to reform the economy, eventually the political system.

NARRATOR: Selig Harrison is an expert on Asia. He is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He fears that US policies are helping create enemies, including Iran, where it need not have them.

Mr. HARRISON: It's a big country, it wants to be important in its part of the world. It doesn't want the United States to be more important in its part of the world than it is. So, we've got to learn that we have to respect the nationalism of the major powers that are emerging in the world -- Iran, India, China, just as examples -- and develop, concentrate on developing positive relationships with them. There are many areas where we can do that. Our technology and our economic power is needed by coun-tries all over the world.

We need not have enemies. I don't think there's any implacable enemy that we face.

NARRATOR: After possible enemies in the Middle East, North Korea has been singled out as a possible enemy of the United States. A closer look at the facts reveals a more complex, and perhaps more hopeful picture.

Larry Korb was a senior Pentagon official in the Reagan administration. He is now with the Brookings Institution. He finds South Korea much stronger than North Korea.

Mr. KORB: The idea that if we got involved in the Middle East again we couldn't handle an attack by North Korea on South Korea simultaneously makes no sense at all. I mean, it assumes that the South Korean military goes away. The South Korean military by itself can more than handle the North Korean military.

INTERVIEWER: Which country is stronger? South Korea or North Korea?

Mr. HARRISON: Well, there isn't any comparison. South Korea, in the first place, has a population twice the size of North Korea. And it has a military-industrial complex, which enables it to make very sophisticated military equipment on its own.

NARRATOR: Much attention has recently been focussed on the possibility that North Korea is seeking to build nuclear weapons. But North Korea, according to William Maynes, is not so much seeking to acquire a nuclear ability as trying to break out of its crippling isolation.

Mr. MAYNES: North Korea is anxious to break out of its isolation. It knows that almost nothing it does gets our atten-tion except one thing; and that is the nuclear weapons. That does get our attention. But I think their purpose is more to break out of their diplomatic isolation than it is to acquire nuclear weapons. But that remains to be tested in negotiations, but that's my own personal belief. In fact, it's a belief I know that's held by some very high South Koreans who have negotiated with the North Koreans.

NARRATOR: Selig Harrison agrees that North Korea seeks improved relations with the United States and other countries.

Mr. HARRISON: North Korea is very anxious to become friends with the United States. They have on friends in Russia and China, as they used to, subsidizing their economy and their defense. They're desperate to get friendly with the United States, South Korea and Japan, but they're extremely nationalistic and proud. Their posture, which often seems to us like terrible anti-Americanism and that they're hopeless, implacable enemies, that they represent demons and enemies is insensitive to what their outlook is from Pyongyang.

NARRATOR: North Korea began a program to build nuclear weapons when it was confronted by US nuclear weapons in South Korea. But now it is eager to trade away its nuclear option, in Selig Harrison's view.

Mr. HARRISON: I don't think that they have made nuclear weapons. They have accumulated some plutonium, which they could use to make nuclear weapons if they were to increase the amount, but they don't want to. They want to trade that for acceptance by the world, political and economic normalization, and economic help that they desperately need.

The only route really is diplomacy. And it's beginning to work because we're beginning to recognize that North Korea is willing to bargain to end its nuclear weapons program.

NARRATOR: The larger problem of nuclear proliferation has been identified as the main danger to the United States.

Mr. KORB: Well, we certainly need to be concerned about the spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons technology, ballistic missile technology because that could create chaos in the inter-national system. But in most cases, the way to deal with that is through diplomatic solutions. And the way to do that is for the United States to exercise its own moral leadership by cutting its own nuclear weapons and stopping this outlandish arms sales all around the world. Our ability to influence other nations to stop getting these new weapons of mass destruction is undermined when we go around selling them to people around the world.

We made a good step in this direction by continuing the moratorium on underground nuclear testing. I think that will help us in working with other nations. But this is a problem that is 99 percent political or diplomatic and maybe one percent military.

NARRATOR: The United States must exercise leadership in the world, according to William Colby, by resolving conflicts without the use of military force.

INTERVIEWER: Are there conflicts of interest between the United States and other countries?

Mr. COLBY: Oh, sure, but we call it competition when we talk about economics and it's a good thing. Sure, there are conflicts in a way, but the question is what limits do you accept for them. I mean, if you have a conflict with your neighbor over the marking of your fence, you don't shoot at him. What you do is you talk to him, you try to negotiate the thing out.

Mr. KORB: I think the defining feature of the post-cold war era is going to be much more reliance on diplomacy with military as a backdrop rather than, as happened too often during the cold war, you had the military option with diplomacy playing a secon-dary role.

NARRATOR: But hyped fears of alleged foreign enemies are diverting our attention from major dangers at home.

Mr. MAYNES: There are lots of things that threaten Americans: The decline in our living standards, the violence in our streets, the drug problem. All these things are tremendous threats to Americans as individuals and create a great sense of insecurity in the country.

Mr. COLBY: Some of the major dangers are right in front of us, like AIDS. I think that's a major danger. The other danger is over-population. Migration; that's a major danger. Poverty in certain of these areas where frustration and ethnic hatreds are major dangers. But some of these are not just military problems; they're social problems, they're economic problems. And we have to begin to approach those kinds of problems with an equation of how do we handle that kind of a problem in the same fashion as we meet a military threat. That those are threats and we need to devote the resources to them and solve the problem in some fashion.

Admiral LaROCQUE: Well, there's an old military maxim, which says that if you don't have an enemy, you don't need an army. I really don't know envy these people in the Pentagon now who are forced to come up with war plans and, worse yet, to come up with the recommendations to the president for the size and composition of our military forces when they don't have an enemy to measure our force strength against.

I hope that at some point this nation will wake-up to the fact that we no longer have an enemy anywhere in the world of any significant proportions and adjust our military forces and our military spending to that new level of international threat.

Until next time, for "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I'm Gene LaRocque.

[Over credits]

Prof. ABU'KHALIL I don't think there is any technical, military response to Islamic fundamentalism. I think the way to fight Islamic fundamentalism is through democracy and through economic prosperity and justice. Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalist leaders, like Sheik Abdul Rahman, I will argue are quite dangerous to stability and to peace. But equally, or perhaps more dangerous, are the underlying causes. More dangerous than the sheik in New York is poverty in Egypt, is repression in the Middle East, is the absence of democratic freedoms.

And equally dangerous is continued US policies in the Middle East that have very little respect for human rights and democracy, that only happen to scrutinize a human rights record of government if that government happens to be critical of US foreign policy. And those who are abusing the rights, like Saudi Arabia, who happen to be on good terms with the United States, really get away with it. Witness the way the Islamic fundamenta-list terrorists -- and I think they deserve that title -- in Afghanistan, the way they are engaging in indiscriminate shelling, in the oppression of...

[End of broadcast.]