Rear Admiral Gene LaRocque (USN, Ret.)
Director, Center for Defense Information
INTERVIEWER & NARRATOR:
Sanford Gottlieb, Senior Producer
MARKETING & OPERATIONS:
Mark Sugg
PRODUCERS:
Matthew Hansen
Nick Moore
Lori McRea
Daniel Sagalyn
PRINCIPAL ANALYSTS & SCRIPTWRITERS:
David Johnson & Dina Tsitsis
PROGRAM PRODUCERS:
Dina Tsitsis & Mark Sugg
ORIGINATION:
Washington, D.C.
PROGRAM NO.:
512
INITIAL BROADCAST:
8 December 1991
CONDITION OF USE: Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR"
(Center for Defense Information).
(C) Copyright 1991, Center for Defense Information. All Rights Reserved.
Videotapes also available.
BARRY BLECHMAN
President, Defense Forecasts, Inc.
Admiral STANLEY FINE, (USN, Ret.)
Former Navy Budget Director
NATALIE GOLDRING
Deputy Director, British-American Security Information Council
JOHN STEINBRUNER
Director, Foreign Policy, The Brookings Institution
RAYMOND TANTER
Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan
NARRATOR: The 1980s saw the largest increase in peacetime military spending and the biggest federal budget deficit in American history. But the party's over.
From TV Ad: "We need to cut away the dead weight and get back to the basics."
NARRATOR: Madison Avenue has tuned-in to a fact most Americans have known for awhile: New situations mean new priorities.
From TV Ad: "Everything's changing. Wasting is out."
NARRATOR: Since the corporate world and public opinion appear to be in accord, will the federal government join the "new priorities" bandwagon, too?
["AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" program introduction.]
Admiral GENE LaROCQUE: Well, during the past 40 years, we've been rightly concerned about a possible war between the United States and the Soviet Union and, therefore, we paid an awful lot of attention to the advice of our military commanders. And today, we must also pay attention to their advice. But now that a war with the United States and the Soviet Union no longer a very high probability, some people in the United States are beginning to ask some good, common sense questions about the size, capability, deployment and, more importantly, the purpose of our military forces. We're spending a lot of money yet for the military and the questions which are arising from the American public on this matter are increasingly important. Our program is about that today.
MAN-ON-THE-STREET: Necessities are the only thing that people are spending money on right now and, unfortunately, it's true for me, too.
SANFORD GOTTLIEB: Most Americans know how to prepare a budget -- by the week, by the month, by the year. What we do is we calculate our income, we list our priorities, and we try not to get over-extended with credit cards and loans.
"AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" sent Dina out on the streets of Washington to talk to people about budgets. Dina, what did you find?
DINA TSITSIS: That's right, Sandy. People said that it's good old common sense that tells them that when situations change, priorities have to change, too.
(On the street) When times are tight, how is your approach different?
WOMAN-ON-THE-STREET: Well, we don't go to the movies as often.
MAN-ON-THE-STREET: Well, at our ages, we're just making do.
MAN-ON-THE-STREET: Basically, I set my budget up according to how I pay my bills. You know, everybody has to pay bills. Okay. We got to pay for our kids, you know, if we have kids. We have to pay for a car.
NARRATOR: Most families and individuals maintain a flexible attitude when faced with the challenge of re-organizing their priorities -- saving for a home, buying a car every so often. But the kids have grown and college tuition looms on the horizon; new priorities have to be set. What will be at the top of the list? The mortgage? A car? Or, college?
But what about the government? Now the global political climate is warmer, the cold war is over. Efforts are being made to lessen tensions in the Middle East. Yet US military spending continues to hover around $300 billion a year, a large portion of government spending, such as Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs, is relatively uncontrollable by Congress each year. The government chooses to spend nearly
60 percent of the remaining budget, the discretionary budget, on the military.
But the Department of Defense is also facing a new situation now. The challenges are different from those of the past. Containment of Soviet expansionism was the reason for high military spending, but the disintegration of the Soviet state shows that the Kremlin may not keep some of its own republics, much less make plans to export communism.
RICHARD CHENEY, Secretary of Defense (congressional hearing, 7 Feb., '91): Whether they want to or not, I think they are going to find it increasingly difficult to project power beyond their borders, and that obviously lessens the threat that we've been faced with for the last 40-some years."
NARRATOR: The challenge facing the federal government is striking a balance between the military and other competing priorities, such as investments in education and the infrastruc-ture or reducing the national debt.
Jeff Faux is the president of the Economic Policy Institute.
JEFF FAUX (at the EPI Convention): "It's important to understand that if you don't invest one year, you don't make up for it by simply continuing investment the next year at the level you were used to. When the kids drop out of school, when the bridge is not built, when the road deteriorates, it puts an additional burden on the following year. So, any of these numbers are actually understatements. But if you take absolute rock bottom minimum, we're talking about the immediate need for another $60 billion."
NARRATOR: Is it possible for the Pentagon to re-organize its priorities? Let's look back.
The United States quickly adjusted its priorities following World War II. Within two years, troop size was cut from 12 million to 1.5 million people. Many factories devoted to the war effort were closed or converted to production of civilian goods. Now the cold war has ended, but the size and shape of our military forces haven't undergone basic changes. President Eisenhower gave us a clue to why military changes are so slow in coming.
President DWIGHT EISENHOWER: "We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions... Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government."
NARRATOR: It seems to me it's time to clean the slate and look for some fresh perspectives on what's really important to us as a nation -- our domestic needs here at home, our changing needs abroad. Maybe it's time for us to use the same kind of common sense we apply in our own households to do our own budgets to the way the government does its budget.
We should ask the military a set of basic questions that we would ask ourselves when our needs change. For citizens, it may be medical insurance, owning their own home or putting money away for those all too frequent rainy days. The first step to take is to determine if there are pressing problems that need immediate attention.
MAN-IN-THE-STREET: My economic welfare right now is what threatens me, whether or not I'm going to have money to live on. That's my biggest threat right now.
WOMAN-IN-THE-STREET: Right now I'm looking to buy a house or a condo in the next year, so I'm really trying to save money and spend less on short term things and more on long term investment things.
NARRATOR: Americans are concerned with how to get by in their daily lives. The thought of an outside threat is no longer in the front of their minds.
MAN-IN-THE-STREET: There might be some minor threat, from a business standpoint, from the Japanese.
Ms. TSITSIS (interviewing on the street): How do you think we can rectify that?
Same MAN-IN-THE-STREET: Put out more quality products.
NARRATOR: Nor is a threat to the United States in the front of Stanley Fine's mind. Admiral Fine is the former Navy budget director.
Admiral STANLEY FINE (USN, Ret.): There's no physical threat to the continental United States, or Canada, or Latin America. There's no physical threat, in a conventional sense, to Western Europe. There's no physical conventional threat to Africa. There's no physical conventional threat to any American interests of any significance in southern Asia. There certainly is no concern, except perhaps for some relatively remote possibility that Kim Il-Sung may decide to act up -- any threat in northeastern Asia.
JOHN STEINBRUNER: The idea of threat implies deliberately organized aggression and, no, there is not much of a problem of deliberately organized aggression. I mean, we deter it adequately and we can defend against it.
NARRATOR: John Steinbruner is the highly respected director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution.
Mr. STEINBRUNER: There are many security problems of very different types. The Soviet military establishment, which has the largest capacity other than ours, is threatened with disintegration and that could pose a number of serious security problems we have to worry about.
NARRATOR: No threats then, but some security problems.
One of those problems is control of nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union has about 27,000 nuclear warheads, 20 percent of them outside the Russian Republic. The civil unrest in some Soviet republics, coupled with the fear of Third World countries like Iraq or North Korea getting nuclear weapons, has some people worried.
Barry Blechman is a leading expert on the American military and president of Defense Forecasts.
BARRY BLECHMAN: First of all, of course, there is some threat of nuclear attack on this country, either due to an accident or because a maniac gets hold of nuclear forces, particularly in the circumstances the Soviet Union finds itself in today, where we could well be seeing civil war and all kinds of anarchy there.
NARRATOR: But Blechman believes that the threat from Third World nuclear weapons may be overstated.
Mr. BLECHMAN: I think these concerns about threats from Third World countries with nuclear weapons are greatly exaggerated, at least for the near and mid-term. At some point, yes, India might threaten us or other countries.
NARRATOR: The spread of nuclear weapons may not be a problem that can be handled militarily. Within the Soviet Union, arms control agreements and economic aid from the West may lessen the chances of a newly independent republic getting control of nuclear weapons.
The Middle East is an area where past efforts have not made much headway in lessening tensions. It's an area Natalie Goldring is still keeping her eye on.
NATALIE GOLDRING: I think the principal region of concern is still the Middle East. We don't know what will happen in Iraq. The situation there is, in fact, very much the same as it was before we sent half a million troops. We don't know what will happen in Iran, in Syria, in Libya. I also have concerns about India and Pakistan.
NARRATOR: Natalie Goldring is Deputy Director of the British-American Security Information Council and a well-informed authority on the military budget.
Ms. GOLDRING: I think, in some cases, there are threats to our ability to gain access to natural resources. There are not threats to the homeland, the United States.
NARRATOR: But Admiral Fine doesn't worry as much.
Admiral FINE: If worse came to worst in the Middle East and one of the bully-boys of the Middle East started marching, ultimately they've got to sell their oil. They've got to sell their oil to Western Europe, they've got to sell their oil to the United States. So that regardless of what government is in in the oil-producing nations of the Middle East, which are I guess our major concern, they've got to sell oil. They can't stop selling oil. They're oil dollar junkies now.
NARRATOR: Government officials often say the current threat is instability.
President GEORGE BUSH: "The threat -- As I looked at the world, the threat is unpredictability and stability, how do you -- or instability is the threat."
RAYMOND TANTER: Well, the main military threat facing the United States is uncertain. It's an uncertain future. It's the threat from the possible break-up of Yugoslavia, the break-up of the Soviet Union. It's the possible break-up of Iraq.
NARRATOR: Raymond Tanter is a professor of political science at the University of Michigan. He served as a Middle East expert on the National Security Council staff in the Reagan administration.
Prof. TANTER: Rather than to have a fixed definition of threat, one has to keep the nature of the threat open.
NARRATOR: One reason the president and others are not looking terribly hard to their crystal balls isn't difficult to understand. Under the media's watchful eye, bad predictions are worse than no predictions at all.
Ms. GOLDRING: I think the administration wants to protect against adverse change. I think Congress wants to do that, as well. The question is who would be held responsible if we were wrong. When we failed to predict the threat, generally the president has gotten blamed.
NARRATOR: When military threats are fuzzy, it's hard to make sensible, concrete decisions on military policy or spending. Fuzziness also lets the government continue military spending at high levels until a decision is forced, either from within or without.
Today, the United States is clearly a country without significant enemies. The security problems facing the United States don't physically threaten us or our interests. Common sense tells us that there are ways other than armed force to deal with conflicts: diplomacy, economic sanctions, economic aid.
Today, not being pressed by any enemies, the United States can deliberately choose what it should defend.
Mr. BLECHMAN: I think, first of all, we have to be able to defend or at least deter attacks against our own territory. And I, in fact, would broaden our conception of that to a degree. I think the defense of our territory from unwanted incursions by --whether it's illegal immigrants, or drugs, or whatever, should be part of our military mission; not in this country itself, but in terms of surveillance outside our borders.
NARRATOR: No one would dispute the defense of our borders and territories. The harder job is deciding whether places beyond our borders require US military action. Some specialists are addressing that problem by advocating an international approach, rather than have the United States go it alone.
Mr. STEINBRUNER: The phrase I've been using and is increasingly in vogue is "cooperative security," to imply that that's preventive medicine. You arrange conditions of military deployment such that aggression cannot occur, rather than gang-up on whoever does it after they've done it.
NARRATOR: But the possibility exists that, even under a cooperative security arrangement, an aggressor could invade another country completely disregarding the strength and numbers against him. Military intervention would still be necessary to stop him in his tracks and someone may have to lead the pack.
Prof. TANTER: Well, I think the United States is the defender of the free world, but the United States' definition of the free world has now changed to incorporate the former communist world. So, the United States is, in fact, the policeman of the world. Uncle Sam has no choice but to answer the telephone when nations dial 911.
NARRATOR: Tanter concedes that although the United States can, it may not want to carry a big stick.
Prof. TANTER: Well, I think the United States has the military capability to defend any friend against any foe "so that the light of liberty can survive," to borrow from John F. Kennedy's inaugural address. But does the United States have the resolve, the will to do it? I doubt it. in the 1990s, there will be an emphasis on such phrases as "Come home, America."
MAN-IN-THE-STREET: Defend ourselves, defend our borders, our common friends, and just keep an eye on things, make sure things are going the way we hope they go.
WOMAN-IN-THE-STREET: My fiance's in the military, so of course I want the military to be kept strong so that he'll have a job. But I do think that we should be cutting back and not being the policeman of the world, so to speak, as I see it now.
NARRATOR: There is still concern about events around the world, but Americans are taking a more careful look at needs at home and competing problems abroad.
Today, when there is no significant enemy, the armed forces can be dramatically reduced. What kind of a military do we need?
Ms. GOLDRING: I think we really need to look at restructuring our entire force structure. Now Secretary Cheney says we've already done that. In fact, he continually refers to a radical restructuring of US forces. Even if you look out five years from now though, the Department of Defense's plans are very similar to the force that exists today; it's just shrunk. Instead, I think we need to look at changing the balance of our forces, looking more at forces that can be reconstituted over a longer period of time.
Mr. BLECHMAN: All the work that's been done, in my opinion, is wedded to the old issues of the cold war. And no matter how far reaching the modifications that have been made, that are made in the proposals, they're essentially taking the old models and saying, well, the Russian threat is less, so how much do we need. And I think we need new models.
NARRATOR: The difficulty of abandoning the cold war is hardly surprising. The size, shape, cost, armament and deployment of our military machine are almost entirely the result of the 45-year confrontation with the Soviet Union and its allies. According to the Pentagon, close to 90 percent of the $300 billion annual military budget has been directed against the Soviet Union.
Since a Soviet threat is no longer a concern, most experts agree that the armed forces have to be smaller, mobile and based more at home.
Ms. GOLDRING: I'm talking about forces where you might have a very small proportion of them in the active duty and a large proportion in the reserves with the ability to bring them back to active duty as necessary.
Mr. BLECHMAN: I emphasize mobility. I think most of it, virtually all of it should be based in this country. And it's a more flexible force. It comes in smaller pieces so we don't have to go in like a Goliath in all these situations.
NARRATOR: It makes sense that the United States should substantially reduce its military now. Half a million US troops crushed the fourth largest army in the world in Iraq. Even with a bigger challenge, we would still need far less than the three-and-a-half million troops we currently have on active and reserve duty.
A new versatile military force that has perhaps half the size might be better adapted to the changing world climate. It all comes down to the bottom line. When you've figured out that a new house is important to you and you need to save money for the down payment, what's the dollar figure you're looking at?
MAN-IN-THE-STREET: Well, I think it's obvious that the military budget could be substantially cut and ought to be substantially cut and resources diverted to higher priority needs, in terms of both serving needs here at home and other kinds of need abroad.
Mr. STEINBRUNER: The military budget right now in '92 dollars in on the order of $290 billion. And if we hold those dollars constant, we are imagining that a fully developed, cooperative security arrangement could take the annual military budget down to about $150 billion by the year 2001.
In the course of that time, we would have saved
$500 billion from now till '91 over what we otherwise would spend and we would be saving at the rate of about $100 billion a year over the defense budget as it otherwise would be.
NARRATOR: What does the military need to do to get those savings? Maybe something we all do ourselves.
Ms. GOLDRING: When times are tough, you don't start with what you spent the year before, you start from zero and you work your way up. You decide how much you need for rent, utilities, clothing, necessities, and then you decide how much is left over. If the Pentagon were forced to start from zero right now and build their budget from that level, I think they would have an extraordinarily difficult time justifying the $300 billion budget.
NARRATOR: The Bush administration talks about a 25 percent reduction in forces from now until 1996, even though the Pentagon is asking for more money. But these tentative plans were hammered out when the Soviets were still considered a danger. If the biggest possible danger now is a nation like Iraq, then a smaller, far less expensive force would be more in touch with the times.
It seems logical: No enemies, pressing domestic threats and a need to reduce the armed forces mean less money for the military. So, what are the obstacles to reducing the military?
MAN-IN-THE-STREET: We're very proud of our military and nobody wants to see them cut because when you start talking about cuts, you start talking about suffering. We all know what suffering is, you know. Nobody wants to see anybody suffer, but it's clear somebody's going to have to suffer in order for things to get better.
Mr. BLECHMAN: The services are so pervasive in American society, such a large portion of our society has served in or has relatives who have served in, or worked for, or in some way are connected with the services that they just have an awful lot of political clout. And when it comes down to challenging what they see as their core interests, it's very difficult.
NARRATOR: Their core interest is, of course, keeping their jobs, so efforts to make major cuts in military personnel will likely be met with resistance.
And the loss of jobs in their districts and states is not a popular issue for members of Congress either. When those jobs are in the weapons industry, you can bet that Capitol Hill will be teaming with lobbyists pushing to maintain the status quo. Military contractors are fighting to hold on to their Pentagon business. It's not going to be easy.
Ms. GOLDRING: You have to be willing to close bases. You have to be willing to let companies shut down, not just factory lines, in order to bring the defense budget down significantly.
NARRATOR: Interservice rivalry is another strong force against reducing the military.
Prof. TANTER: Well, institutional inertia is one of the obstacles. The people who are in the Navy do not want to give up their missions to the Army, and the Air Force doesn't want to give up its missions, doesn't want to give up its dollars. So, I think the president is going to have to ride herd over the defense budget in order to try to get hold of it.
NARRATOR: Yet another obstacle is the 1990 budget agreement between Congress and the Bush administration.
Ms. GOLDRING: In the budget agreement last Fall, Congress and the administration agreed that US spending would be divided into three pieces: defense spending, domestic spending, and international spending, including foreign aid. And what they agreed to do was to put walls between those three categories so that, even if you saved a billion dollars from the defense budget, you couldn't transfer it to domestic programs.
NARRATOR: The question is whether these walls will be taken down by Congress.
One remedy that's in the hands of every American is citizen action. Without the Soviet Union constantly providing the reason for a military build-up, the United States can adjust to a new role in the world. In this time of transition, the public will now have the chance to assume a job that used to be left just to the so-called experts.
So, the public is faced with an old, but increasingly important challenge: getting informed and getting involved. The Pentagon cannot spend a dime without the public's approval through the US Congress. Our government and military policy, in particular, should move in a direction that Americans think is in their overall interest.
Mr. STEINBRUNER: The United States doesn't talk as if it recognizes that it has a choice to make about its security principles. It will have to begin to talk that way, it will have to debate the matter, and that there will have to be a resolution, if you will, of that debate before we actually will change.
NARRATOR: As the decade of the 80s drew to a close, Americans, realizing they're spending spree had come to an end, began to budget for changing times. Unfortunately, our government has yet to adjust its priorities. It's time for our government to dramatically scale-down our armed forces and stop the military's wasteful spending spree.
Admiral LaROCQUE: We've been at war for 40 years with the Soviet Union, a cold war, and during that period, we've become accustomed to buying weapons. We've been hooked on big military expenditures. But now that the cold war is over, and the American public knows it's over, even if some of our elected representatives don't, the American people have come to realize that we could spend far less for our military today and still maintain a strong defense posture.
Americans also know that we have many needs here in the United States and that, if we can scale-back the military to a suitable size for the situation today, we might have enough money to do the things we need to do in our own society. In the long run, I'm convinced that the common sense of the American public will prevail and we'll have the kind of military force that we need.
Until next time, for "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I'm Gene LaRocque.
[Over credits]
MAN-IN-THE-STREET: Ultimately, our level of influence is very, very minute.
Ms. TSITSIS: And how can that change?
MAN-IN-THE-STREET: By more education. By people knowing what the real story is. We need to know both sides of the coin, not just the one that we hear so much in the newspapers.
MAN-IN-THE-STREET: Just write to the Congress, let them know what you like and what you don't like, and try to have an active voice. Peoples' voices count.
WOMAN-IN-THE-STREET: If we did what they do, just spend, write checks, we'd go to jail, and it's unbelievable what they do.
Ms. TSITSIS: How do you think the public should get involved in deciding military policy? Do you think the public has a role?
MAN-IN-THE-STREET: Of course. That's what voting is all about, isn't it?
MAN-IN-THE-STREET: Well, I think we need a substantial galvanization...
[End of broadcast.]
CONDITION OF USE: Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR"
(Center for Defense Information).
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