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National Security and Fiscal Reality: An Impending Collision
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14613 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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5 / 1988 |
3,098 Words |
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Harlan K. Ullman
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To use a maritime metaphor, the ship of state is on a collision course with fiscal reality. The first Reaganaut since former Budget Director David Stockman to sound the alarm publicly was ex-Secretary of the Navy James Webb. His sudden resignation in February will be remembered largely as the result of a policy rift with Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci over defense priorities and naval spending cuts. That controversy, however, reflected only sighting the tip of this looming fiscal iceberg. To the next administration will fall the responsibility of coping with the consequences of collision.
For national security, the immediate impact of hitting this fiscal iceberg will be a significant and swift reduction in overall U.S. military strength and numbers, perhaps by as much as a third and beginning before this decade's end. The most newsworthy questions, as is the case with many dramatic events, will focus on why and how this reduction occurred. The more relevant questions, however, rest in identifying and understanding the consequences for national security, if any, of this impending diminution of military capability, and determining the likely implications for the broader geostrategic context of U.S. and allied security as well as what damage control measures the new administration and next Congress must consider, given this erosion in military power.
For better or worse, the time remaining in office for the current administration and Congress is far too short for any course corrections even to be considered. Adjustments in commitments and threat assessments are not going to happen. And, despite the attractive solution of deriving greater value from the dollars spent on defense to arrest the impending decline in military power, the most sweeping and recent attempts at serious reform of the defense process, including the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Law of 1986 and the President's Blue Ribbon Commission on Improving Defense Management (the Packard Commission), have simply not yet moved the rudder enough to deflect a future collision.
In all likelihood, the next administration will enter office largely unaware of or prepared for this condition. Since it takes time for an administration to fill senior positions and have them approved, and time beyond that to settle into office, the chances are good that the administration will fall behind in addressing these issues. That reality will only serve to complicate our future choices.
Why the decline?
Projecting the overall decline in U.S. military strength precipitated by constrained defense spending is a relatively straightforward exercise. Estimating the political consequences of that decline is in a different universe of predictability. This is because it will be difficult to predict how the public will react to the fact that after a 50 percent real (after inflation) increase in annual defense spending during the Reagan years, we could be left with what may come to be called the incredibly shrinking defense establishment. And it is inherently difficult to determine precisely how much military power is objectively needed to ensure our security. The structural reasons that will cause the decline, however, are much easier to identify.
First, barring unprecedented economic growth, the triple deficits of the federal budget, trade imbalance, and burgeoning
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