Secretary of Defense LES ASPIN (Press conference, 9/1/93):

"The Clinton administration defense program that we're going to talk about today is based upon tomorrow's requirements."

NARRATOR: On the surface, there's lots of talk of change.

This is the story of President Clinton's military establishment and how it is or is not adjusting to the post-cold war world.

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

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

America needs a strong military establishment to fight and win wars. We need a military establishment to defeat any enemy that might threaten the existence of the United States. But as we look around the world today, we see that we do not have an enemy anywhere in the world. We can decide who to fight, when to fight, where to fight, or not fight at all.

President Clinton was elected on a promise of change, so we thought we would take a look at how President Clinton has actually changed the military establishment today. I think you're going to find some very interesting surprises.

President-elect BILL CLINTON (Little Rock, AR 11/3/92):

"My fellow Americans, with high hopes and brave hearts, in massive numbers, the American people have voted to make a new beginning."

NARRATOR: When Bill Clinton was first elected president, he talked about the need for change.

President-elect CLINTON (same speech): "This election is a clarion call for our country to face the challenges of the end of the cold war and the beginning of the next century."

NARRATOR: Today, his Secretary of Defense Les Aspin says he's developed a blueprint for fundamentally changing the military.

DoD Secretary ASPIN (Georgetown University, 9/2/93):

"In December of 1991, a presidential hopeful named Bill Clinton gave a major speech outlining a vision for America's national security in the post-cold war era. In that speech, Bill Clinton outlined a number of objectives, but his number one objective was this: He said, and I quote, 'We must restructure our military forces for a new era.' Well, consider it done.

"I'm pleased to be back at Georgetown to announce the fulfillment of this pledge."

NARRATOR: What changes is the Clinton administration plan-ning for the Pentagon? How extensive are they? Will they lead to reduced military spending?

Today, the world scene is completely different from five years ago. The iron curtain has collapsed. Eastern Europe is governed by democratically elected governments and free of Soviet military forces. The Soviet empire has disintegrated. The military danger to the United States and its allies has been significantly reduced.

During President Bush's term the Pentagon developed what it called the "Base Force" to adapt to the changing world. Under this "Base Force" plan, military spending was going to go from $286 billion in 1993 to $289 billion in 1997. All in all, George Bush planned to spend $1,424,000,000,000, about as much as was spent at the height of the cold war.

President Clinton plans to spend almost as much: a total of $1,351,000,000,000. This is only 5 percent less than what President Bush was planning to spend.

Under Bush's plan, active duty personnel levels were supposed to go to 1,568,000, a reduction of 11 percent. President Clinton plans to go to 1.4 million active duty people. This is

11 percent less than the Bush plan.

Under President Bush's plan, the number of Army divisions, Navy ships and Air Force wings were to be slightly reduced.

President Clinton's military will look like this.

As you can see, President Clinton is planning to make only marginal reductions from the Bush plan.

The Clinton military plan will also keep large numbers of troops overseas, with 100,000 soldiers in Europe and about 100,000 soldiers in Asia. Hundreds of Navy ships will continue to patrol the world's oceans and scores of ships loaded with military equipment will continue to float in the Indian Ocean, ready on a moment's notice to go into action.

DoD Secretary ASPIN (Press conference, 9/1/93): "General Powell and I are here to present to you today the results of the Bottom-Up Review."

NARRATOR: Secretary of Defense Les Aspin says his plan is based on an exhaustive study in which the Pentagon looked at America's military needs from the bottom-up.

DoD Secretary ASPIN (Press conference, 9/1/93): "The Clinton administration defense program that we are going to talk about today is based upon tomorrow's requirements. It is a product of a comprehensive, broadly collaborative review based upon the real dangers that face America in the new era."

NARRATOR: Thoughtful observers differ on whether the Clinton Bottom-Up plan is a significant change from the Bush Base Force Plan.

LOREN THOMPSON: The bottom-up review has been rather roundly criticized by a number of people, both on the left and on the right.

NARRATOR: Loren Thompson is the knowledgeable deputy director of Georgetown University's National Security Studies Program. He's also a consultant to the Pentagon and various military contractors.

Mr. THOMPSON: In my opinion though, it's a relatively good compromise between conflicting impulses to downsize or to main-tain what we already had as a result of the cold war. I think the bottom line on the bottom-up is that what we have here is an emerging consensus between Republicans and Democrats on what type of a force structure we need for the post-cold war period.

NARRATOR: Others question how broad a range of options was examined.

RUSSELL MURRAY: In simplest terms, you wonder whether they did really consider the alternatives to the national security policy that they have adopted.

NARRATOR: Russell Murray was the insightful Assistant Secretary of Defense for Program Analysis and Evaluation from 1977 to 1981.

Mr. MURRAY: Was that determined at the outset or was that arrived at through a series of analyses? There's no indication in the report that any such alternatives were considered.

NARRATOR: Some observers are intrigued by how little difference there is between the Bush and Clinton plans.

JONATHAN CLARKE: It strikes me that what's come out is something very close to what President Bush proposed not two years before. It really looks like a top-down review to me.

NARRATOR: For 19 years Jonathan Clarke was a diplomat for the United Kingdom. Today, he is a prolific writer and teaches at Georgetown University.

Mr. CLARKE: What I mean is it seems to me that they've taken what was already in existence and have tried to come up with justifications of keeping those units, those aircraft carriers and so on in existence.

NARRATOR: The new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili, at his confirmation hearing charac-terized the differences between the two plans as marginal.

General JOHN SHALIKASHVILI (before Senate Armed Services Committee, 9/22/93):

"I think where there is a difference between the base force and the force developed during the bottom-up review process is on the margins."

NARRATOR: Secretary of Defense Les Aspin says that the differences between his plan and the Bush administration plan is that his plan takes into account the complete collapse of the Soviet Union, while the Bush plan only took into account the collapse of Soviet control over Eastern Europe.

DoD Secretary ASPIN (Georgetown University, 9/2/93):

"The base force took our first step towards redirecting the United States' defense programs away from the Warsaw Pact kind of threat."

NARRATOR: Secretary Aspin says the Bottom-Up Review military force is the logical successor to the Bush administra-tion's Base Force Plan.

DoD Secretary ASPIN (Press conference, 9/1/93):

"What you've got is, of course, a force structure which is smaller than what we had before, but we got a force structure which in some cases has got more, as the chairman pointed out with the Marines. It is a defense budget which has changed its focus from one threat -- Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact -- to a new world of a whole new bunches of threats."

NARRATOR: But with both the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact gone, you would think there would be massive reductions in US military spending and size.

NATALIE GOLDRING: So far, what we've seen in the Defense Department is truly a failure to respond to the changes in the world over the course of the last five years.

NARRATOR: Natalie Goldring is the thoughtful deputy director of the British American Security Information Council. She believes that since 1988 the world has undergone fundamental changes and that the Pentagon has been dragging its feet in changing with the times.

Ms. GOLDRING: It's been just five years now since President Gorbachev made his now-famous speech at the United Nations where he announced unilateral reductions in then-Soviet forces.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV (United Nations, December 1988, through translator):

"Today I can report to you that the Soviet Union has taken a decision to reduce its armed forces. Within the next two years, their numerical strength will be reduced by 500,000 men."

Ms. GOLDRING: We haven't seen anything close to the same amount of change here. I'm not preaching revolution for the United States, but I do think we need a revolution of a different sort. I think we really do need a restructuring of the Pentagon and of our entire attitude toward defense and foreign policy. We're still operating as if we were in a cold war world, and we're not anymore.

NARRATOR: Is the Clinton plan affordable?

ANDREW KREPINEVICH: Looking at historical trends...

NARRATOR: Andrew Krepinevich is a leading military analyst and the director of the Defense Budget Project. He thinks the size and shape of President Clinton's military will cost significantly more than what the Pentagon claims.

Mr. KREPINEVICH: ...and even giving some benefit of the doubt to the administration in terms of the claims it makes for savings arrived at through base closures and through acquisition reform, we think you'll still come up with a shortfall of between potentially $25- to $40 billion a year once you reach that supposed steady state of 234 billion and a 1.4 million force.

NARRATOR: William Colby, the respected director of the Central Intelligence Agency during the second Nixon administra-tion, thinks US military spending should be cut significantly.

WILLIAM COLBY: Well, I've been maintaining for some time now that our defense budget could safely and modestly be cut to one-half what it was in the later days of the cold war.

INTERVIEWER: Half of $300 billion?

Mr. COLBY: Yes.

NARRATOR: Besides marginally reducing military spending and the size of the military, the Clinton military establishment has identified new dangers against which it plans to protect the United States.

DoD Secretary ASPIN (Georgetown University, 9/2/93):

"In the post-cold war era, America faces probably four new dangers and threats to American security. They are, number one, regional threats; number two, proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction; three, a threat to our economic strength; and, four, the failure of the democratic reform in the former Soviet bloc and other places."

NARRATOR: Regional dangers are the Pentagon's most demanding concern.

DoD Secretary ASPIN (Press conference, 3/27/93):

"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 as you can see from this chart, no country the Pentagon has claimed as a danger to the United States has as many troops, tanks, helicopters, airplanes or ships -- or spends as much as America. No potential enemy country has a military anywhere near the size or technical prowess of the United States.

The Clinton military establishment is planning to fight in two major regional conflicts at almost the same time. And is planning to do so without any help from allies. More specific-ally, America is preparing to fight on its own in the Middle East and Asia.

General COLIN POWELL, outgoing Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (Press conference, 9/1/93):

"After World War II, postwar stability took the form of occupation armies in Germany and Japan until such time as could turn it over to newly elected democratic leaders. After Korea, we stayed there.

"So, this is a fundamental underlying principle of President Clinton and Secretary Aspin and the Joint Chiefs of Staff strategy statement for the Bottom-Up Review, being able to deal with two major regional contingencies or conflicts near simultaneously."

NARRATOR: Russell Murray agrees with this approach.

Mr. MURRAY: I think there's a lot of logic in that. You think that if the United States becomes involved, for example, in something -- some major contingency and Kim Il Sung in North Korea is thinking about an invasion of the South, he might say to himself 'this is the best time I'm ever going to get to try that' because the United States is all tied up in this other contingency.

NARRATOR: But according to Natalie Goldring, this kind of thinking will lead to an American military vastly larger and much more expensive than necessary.

Ms. GOLDRING: The assumption that the United States would need to meet two regional contingencies at virtually the same time is a very conservative assumption for planning purposes. It means you produce a much bigger force than you would otherwise.

NARRATOR: Natalie Goldring doesn't believe that America needs to plan on fighting two separate conflicts without help from its allies.

Ms. GOLDRING: I think that if you can find two different major regional conflicts that the United States should be inter-vening in at any given time and you can't come up with a good argument for why the allies should be involved, then you need to take another look at those conflicts. This is the post-cold war world. It's a very different world out there. I don't think you can find two major regional conflicts where the United States would have to go it alone.

NARRATOR: Others agree that maintaining excessive forces to fight in two parts of the world is unnecessary.

LAWRENCE 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 on sense at all.

NARRATOR: Larry Korb was a senior Pentagon official in the Reagan administration. He is now a highly regarded senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. He thinks South Korea can defend itself without completely relying on America.

Mr. KORB: 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.

From Film of Christening of US Ship: ..."May God bless her and all who sail in her."

NARRATOR: Most countries have militaries to defend their own territory. During the cold war, America spent trillions of dollars preparing to protect allies and fight overseas against countries which no longer exist today. Even though our European and Asian allies are now prosperous and can defend themselves, the Pentagon is still planning on fighting alone in all corners of the world.

Mr. CLARKE: Well, I see the United States as being rather schizophrenic. On the one hand, we see lots of politicians saying we can no longer be the world's policeman; global cop is out. But we still see this huge defense expenditure. We see $250-, $280 billion a year going out for defense. And the only reason that can be justified is if the United States is, in fact, wanting still to be the global cop. It strikes me that there is a schizo-phrenia here and people need to decide which side of the fence they need to come down on.

NARRATOR: Pentagon officials say they don't want America to play the role of world policeman, yet a world policeman-kind-of-military force is exactly the kind of military President Clinton is planning.

From Pentagon Promotional Video "FROM THE SEA":

"'From the Sea,' as the strategy is called, builds on the experienced ability of naval forces to provide fast and flexible responses to regional challenges and opportunities."

NARRATOR: Each service is intensifying its ability to react quickly and fight on a moment's notice anywhere around the world.

From Pentagon Promotional Video "Global Reach, Global Power":

"The Air Force, by making full and flexible use of its resources, can tailor the appropriate response to any need, any level of threat, anytime, anywhere."

NARRATOR: Jonathan Clarke thinks that besides imposing a huge financial burden on the United States, keeping US troops overseas fosters dependence on the United States.

Mr. CLARKE: I think forward deployment is actually damaging to the resolution of the people in the region to get their own acts together.

Europeans want and are willing to take on much more responsibility for their own defense. But so long as they have 100,000 American troops there, it will be reluctant to do so. Of course, if the Americans are prepared to incur the costs, well, that's terrific news to them. I think, therefore, that forward deployment, in fact, saps the resolution of Europeans.

NARRATOR: Besides preparing to fight all over the world, the Clinton administration has also identified the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as a significant danger to America.

DoD Secretary ASPIN (Georgetown University, 9/2/93):

"The second danger is the threat of the proliferation of -- It's the new nuclear threat. It's the proliferation of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction.

NARRATOR: Others are concerned about weapons proliferation, but don't think the Pentagon should be the only government agency tasked to solve this problem.

Mr. KORB: In most cases, the way to deal with that is through diplomatic solutions. You must make it clear to nations that acquire nuclear technology or ballistic missile technology that the international community will come down hard on them in terms of economic sanctions.

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 these 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.

NARRATOR: President Clinton seems to be interested in non-military means to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

President Clinton (United Nations speech, Fall 1993):

"We will also reform our own system of export controls in the United States to reflect the realities of the post-cold war world."

NARRATOR: But Natalie Goldring thinks it's too early to judge Clinton's approach to solving this problem.

Ms. GOLDRING: The good news is that this is an administra-tion that understands that weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons, as well as advanced conventional weaponry pose a real threat to world security. The bad news is they still have a tendency to deal with these issues in the old ways.

NARRATOR: There are some key decisions coming up. If the president seeks a permanent ban on the testing of all nuclear weapons, that will show other countries that are members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, that the United States is serious about curbing the weapons of mass destruction. If President Clinton seeks to reduce the sale of conventional weapons all over the world, that will also show America is interested in non-military solutions to world problems.

Ms. GOLDRING: If the United States undertakes a sincere effort to make sure there's a comprehensive test ban treaty signed by the time of the NPT renewal conference next Spring, we'll know that this is an administration that really wants to move beyond the old ways. If this administration takes a lead in proposing not conventional arms transfers as usual, but conven-tional arms transfer restraint, we'll know there's been a change. So far, what I've seen is some positive signs in the rhetoric and very little in the policy.

NARRATOR: The Pentagon has created new offices to deal with two dangers it has identified: the dangers of a weak economy and the failure of democratic reform in the Soviet Union. Is this a good idea?

Mr. THOMPSON: One has the impression, looking at the organization of the Office of the Secretary of Defense under the new administration, that they are virtually reproducing the entire cabinet within the Department of Defense. We have an assistant secretary for economic security, we have an assistant secretary for counter-proliferation, we have an assistant secre-tary for furthering democracy. Traditionally, most of these functions have been conducted elsewhere in the government and probably in the future they'll be conducted elsewhere also.

NARRATOR: Why does the Pentagon view economic weakness at home and the future of reform in the former Soviet Union as problems it should solve?

Mr. THOMPSON: I think part of the reason why we have so many non-military activities now being absorbed into the Office of the Secretary of Defense is, indeed, to support our military structure to find missions. But also a big part of the reason why is because they're trendy, because there's no threat right now and, therefore, there's not a lot of urgency about thinking clearly about why you have the military and what it's uses are.

NARRATOR: Jonathan Clarke thinks the Pentagon is the wrong government agency for solving economic problems or promoting democracy abroad.

Mr. CLARKE: My particular criticism of them is that they are not the sort of dangers that respond well to military treat-ment. It strikes me that democracy, it's not something which you teach at the point of bayonet. Democracy is something which you teach in civics classes, by example, by raising economic standards.

Announcer at Department of Defense Ceremony:

"Ladies and gentlemen, now taking their positions on the reviewing stand is the reviewing official for today's ceremony, the Honorable Les Aspin, Secretary of Defense, and representing the hosting Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin L. Powell."

NARRATOR: Overall, why has there been so little change?

Mr. MURRAY: The Pentagon is like a super-tanker. You know, you put the wheel half over and in about a half-an-hour you begin to see the compass move. It's such an immense bureaucracy and there are so many things that have been embedded in the walls of that place that it is very, very hard to make significant changes.

NARRATOR: Loren Thompson thinks the direction the Pentagon is going in is directed from the White House.

Mr. THOMPSON: It is widely believed that Mr. Clinton not only does not have strong convictions about the military, but that to some degree he lacks the moral authority to impose change. My own impression, however, is rather the opposite. My impression is that the major decision priorities for defense in this administration are being driven not in the Pentagon, but in the White House. Now they may be decisions by default in the sense that the administration just doesn't care very much about defense issues. Nonetheless, the net effect is that major changes are occurring and the White House is largely dictating them.

NARRATOR: Jonathan Clarke believes that until the American public lets its views be known, there will be little pressure for change.

Mr. CLARKE: There are no real imperatives playing on the president to reform foreign policy. There are no votes for him either up or down on that matter. So, I think he probably calcu-lates, well, let's leave it alone, let sleeping dogs lie.

Admiral LaRocque: Well, as you can see from the program, the Pentagon, under Secretary of Defense Aspin, did indeed make a complete review of our defense establishment needs. But I think it was surprising that so little change has been accomplished in our military establishment to date. Obviously, we have not cut our military forces significantly. Perhaps more reductions could be made. As a professional military man and in discussions with my professional colleagues, many of us believe more significant reductions could be made.

If, however, we continue to spend at current cold war levels, as the administration obviously plans to do, we have to ask ourselves how in the world are we ever going to be able to solve all the other problems that we have in this country? How are we going to solve the problems of crime, the collapse of our cities, drug abuse, provide adequate health care, housing and education for our people if we continue spending at a high level for the military?

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

[End of broadcast.]