‘New Democrat’ Watch #5: Will Clinton Reject Impotence-Inducing Defense Cuts, Strategies?

(Washington, D.C.): One of the most important tests of President Clinton’s commitment to abandon the left-wing agenda of "Old Democrats" like Jimmy Carter in favor of a "centrist" course will be the imprint he puts on the U.S. national security posture.

What ‘Bottom-Up’ Review?

Specifically, his response to a so-called "bottom-up" review conducted by Secretary of Defense Les Aspin will do much to determine not only the adequacy of America’s military to meet emerging and future threats. It will also unmistakably define the character of Mr. Clinton’s presidency and probably determine whether he, like President Carter before him, will be repudiated by an electorate horrified at the national impotence that is being created on his watch.

This prospect is foreshadowed in an important analysis of the Aspin review, and the strategy and force structure decisions flowing from it, published in the New York Times on 19 June 1993 by Dov Zakheim (see the attachment). Mr. Zakheim — a former senior official in the Reagan Defense Department and a distinguished member of the Center for Security Policy’s Board of Advisors — observes:

"When Mr. Aspin was chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, he proposed a force capable of winning two regional wars simultaneously. President Clinton’s determination to carry out budgetary cuts twice as large as those promised during the campaign has made that objective unachievable. Moreover, as a result of inexorable annual increases in operations and personnel costs, and equally relentless increases in the costs of fielding new weapons, today’s budgetary trends suggest we may not have the resources to conduct even one operation of the magnitude of Desert Storm." (Emphasis added.)

 

Mr. Zakheim underscores a crucial point: Far from being a genuinely "bottom-up" approach — in which commitments and requirements drive strategies which drive force structure decisions which, in turn, drive budgetary projections — Secretary Aspin’s exercise is entirely dictated by pre-determined Clinton defense outlays for the next five years.

Reaping the Whirlwind

The result will be a force structure incapable of meeting the present national security strategy of dealing simultaneously with two threats, leaving the United States with a strategy optimistically dubbed "win-hold-win." Like the Carter-era "swing" strategy, this approach is actually a formula for losing across the board: losing power and influence, inviting future conflicts; losing the initiative in at least some of them when they occur; and inevitably, losing ground in combat, ground that will be recovered only at great cost in lives and national treasure.

Warning signs abound about this "Old Democrat" strategy. The senior civilian leadership in the Pentagon includes the un-nominated but in-place Morton Halperin who writes in the Summer 1993 edition of Foreign Policy magazine that, "The United States should explicitly surrender the right to intervene unilaterally in the internal affairs of other countries by overt military means or by covert operations." The planned, draconian cuts in defense spending and capabilities are consistent with such a view: If implemented, the United States will effectively surrender if not the right then the capability to intervene unilaterally and otherwise project power globally.

Not surprisingly, the nation’s uniformed military are becoming increasingly alarmed at what they are being directed to do by the Clinton/Aspin team at Defense. At issue is not the "reassertion of civilian authority" as one Aspin official put it to the Washington Post this weekend. Rather, it is the scarcely concealed contempt being expressed by some civilians as they impose upon the military spending and force structure decisions and social experiments that are already starting to have extremely deleterious effects on the readiness, morale and fighting capabilities of the U.S. armed forces.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy strongly agrees with the recommendations put forward in this morning’s Post by Frank Sullivan, one of the most knowledgeable Democrats on matters of national security. In the attached op.ed., he calls for an immediate moratorium on further cutbacks in military spending. The Center believes that Mr. Sullivan’s five-part rationale for such a moratorium is compelling and that President Clinton and his national security team ignore it at their peril — and the nation’s.

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1. "New Democrat" Watch is a series of Decision Briefs designed to illuminate important security policy decisions pending before the Clinton Administration. These decisions will do much to determine the compatibility of Clinton policies with the U.S. national interest. They will also provide objective measures of the President’s follow-through on his commitment to abandon the left wing, "Old Democrat" behavior that has afflicted and undermined his presidency thus far.