How Much Is Too Much?

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Generals and admirals for centuries have been notorious for planning to fight the last war. American military men are no different; for 45 years they have prepared for a Soviet version of the blitzkrieg. Panama, Grenada, Libya, even Korea and Viet Nam were all essentially sideshows. The Big One, if it ever came, would begin with the Warsaw Pact's tank and armored columns charging across the Fulda Gap into West Germany, starting a conflict that could escalate to a nuclear Armageddon. The effort to deter or defeat a Soviet invasion of Western Europe shaped almost everything about the U.S. military establishment: manpower requirements, weapons design, budget requests, the works.

With each passing day, this vision of the apocalypse becomes more archaic. The Kremlin's allies, if they can still be called that, are not only abandoning communism; they are demanding the removal of Soviet troops. A delegation from Moscow was in Hungary last week and will be in Czechoslovakia this week to discuss a specific timetable, possibly before the end of the year. The Soviets told the Poles that they are prepared to talk about troop reductions there. Torn by internal dissent and economic failure, the Soviet Union is in the process of unilaterally reducing its army by 500,000 soldiers.

The U.S., meanwhile, is left with a military strategy that was designed for a different world, and a force structure that must be not only reduced but also reshaped to avoid -- or at worst, fight -- the wars that America might actually get into in areas far from the Fulda Gap. How much and how fast are hotly contested subjects. Asked what he expected the U.S. military to look like in 20 years, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell referred to the dizzying pace of current events. "Twenty years?" he quipped. "I'm having trouble staying 20 days ahead right now."

George Bush acknowledged the rapid pace of events in last week's State of the Union address as he called for the U.S. and the Soviet Union to cut their forces in Europe to 225,000 each, with no more than 195,000 of them in Central Europe. When the talks on conventional forces began in Vienna last year, 305,000 American troops still faced more than 600,000 Soviets. Until last week, the most ambitious proposal had been for a negotiated reduction to 275,000 per superpower.

Already some American defense planners envision a further round of talks that would reduce U.S. and Soviet forces in Central Europe to as few as 100,000 a side. The defusing of this decades-old confrontation could result in the biggest demobilization of American forces, in Europe and elsewhere, since the end of World War II. The striking changes that began in 1989, Bush declared in his speech, "mark the beginning of a new era in the world's affairs."

Those hopeful words were reflected neither in the defense budget presented to Congress two days earlier nor in the somber assessments of some of the President's top advisers. Said a ranking defense official: "You could argue that a Soviet Union that has lost Eastern Europe, that feels it is under assault on the periphery, sees Azerbaijanis tear down the fence with Iran, has the Baltics trying to spin loose, faces unrest in the Ukraine, labor disturbances, and still possesses a marvelous military capability is a much more dangerous creature than we faced ten years ago under Brezhnev."

Such thinking seems curiously out of tune with the world as it looks in 1990. The Warsaw Pact, for all practical purposes, is dead as a military alliance. Soviet troops might have to fight their way through Warsaw, Prague and even Berlin before getting anywhere near the Fulda Gap, much less Bonn, Rotterdam or Paris. And while the Soviets were long considered capable of mobilizing for a strike at Western Europe in as little as 14 days, Pentagon analysts say that NATO could now detect preparations a month in advance. Some outside experts argue that signs of war would be evident a full three months ahead of time.

Although Bush pointed out correctly last week that "we see little change in Soviet strategic modernization," even that dark prince of arms-control antagonists, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, has changed his thinking. "For the foreseeable future," says Perle, "I believe we can safely reduce the investment we make in protecting against a massive Soviet nuclear attack."

The "new era" the President spoke of last week will be dominated by economic competition more than military power. On that front, as Bush pointed out, the nation has a great deal to accomplish -- restoring fiscal health, improving education standards, modernizing industry. Rethinking America's military needs is an important place to start. Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, now at the dovish end of the military spectrum, says the Pentagon's budget could be cut 50% by the end of the decade. "We could powerfully enhance our status as a world power, strengthen our military security, and redirect resources to more deserving sectors of our economy," he told TIME.

The fundamental question for Americans is what military menaces they should be prepared for in the 1990s and beyond. And what kind of defense they will need to deal with such threats. A surprising consensus is emerging among planners in and out of Government.

Assuming further negotiated cuts in Europe, the U.S. will have either a far smaller force in Europe or none at all. Pentagon planners sensibly insist that initial U.S. troop and weapons cuts be reversible, so that American forces could return quickly in the unlikely event of a hostile Soviet move. "We need at least another year to determine whether the Soviet conventional restructuring is irreversible," argues James Blackwell, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. This can be accomplished by having the Navy buy fast sea-lift ships that could transport U.S.-based soldiers to Europe in a crisis. The Air Force, similarly, should keep a powerful force of attack aircraft that could leap overseas on short notice. In addition, the military should maintain supply depots in Europe . stocked with tanks, artillery and ammunition.

The superpowers should also re-examine their strategic nuclear forces, with the goal of achieving a far more stable balance. They should ban land-based multiple-warhead (MIRV) missiles, which are tempting targets for a first strike because an attacker can destroy the three to 14 warheads on such launchers by expending only one or two warheads of his own.

In addition, the U.S. should push for a policy of minimal deterrence. In the past ten years, the number of Soviet sites designated for nuclear destruction has grown to more than 20,000, including hundreds of bunkers and communications centers. The superpowers should evolve toward far smaller arsenals, designed merely to survive -- and deter -- a surprise attack with the capacity to retaliate.

In a world less dominated by superpower competition, however, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union may face unexpected challenges from increasingly well- armed Third World nations. The U.S. should be prepared for two types of action:

-- Quick responses with limited force to sudden crises like terrorist hijackings.

-- Somewhat more deliberate responses, but with greater force, to more complex situations like Panama.

The Navy should continue to play the central role in the global projection of U.S. might, though that should be possible with fewer aircraft carriers plus additional transport ships. It is also time for arms-control talks to be expanded to include reducing naval forces.

Given these opportunities, as well as the Pentagon's inescapable budget pressures, it is urgent that Washington devise a coherent plan to have an effective but smaller military by the end if not the middle of the decade. The Pentagon's typical gamesmanship -- pretending to tighten its belt a little each year without rethinking basic issues -- could lead to the worst outcome: a hodgepodge of cuts that will come anyway, guided not by foresight and leadership but by some of the worst instincts in politics.

"When your defense budget is not supported by a military strategy," says Congressman Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, "it will be patched together with pork strategy." Each of the armed services, the defense industry and members of Congress will try to push major reductions off onto someone else while retaining as much as possible for themselves. Warns Phillip Karber of BDM Corp., a leading defense consulting firm: "If we do not % set a direction of where our force structure can go, you can bet that we are going to end up paying more and getting less."

In that respect, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney's 1991 budget was all the more disappointing. Not only were his suggested cuts minimal, but the larger issues of military restructuring were tossed aside in the political jockeying over the proposal to close or scale back 72 military bases and installations. Cheney has appointed a task force to review the Pentagon's gold-plated strategic-weapons systems. But, notes Gordon Adams, respected director of the independent Defense Budget Project, "he did not even hint at slowing down any of them." These include the mobile MX/rail garrison missile project (budgeted for $2.8 billion), the B-2 Stealth bomber ($540 million apiece), and the Seawolf submarine ($3.5 billion apiece), not to mention the Strategic Defense Initiative (which the Administration wants to increase from $3.6 billion to $4.5 billion next year).

Cheney's cuts in conventional weapons systems (such as the highly effective F-14D fighter plane) are mostly preludes to starting production on a new generation of weapons -- such as the Advanced Tactical Fighter ($133 million apiece) -- designed primarily for combat against the Warsaw Pact. Similarly, Cheney argues that all 14 of the Navy's deployable carrier battle groups would be useful in other global conflicts; never mind that the Navy initially lobbied for them by invoking the Soviet threat.

All told, Cheney's budget for Bush's "new era" would increase spending from $291 billion in fiscal 1990 to $295 billion in 1991; he argues that this amount, based on 4.6% inflation, is in fact a 2.6% decrease in purchasing power. Yet even adjusting for inflation, the 1991 figure would be nearly 30% higher than that in 1980, before Ronald Reagan began his anti-Soviet modernization buildup. The Bush Administration proposes to continue cutting at an inflation-discounted rate of 2% a year until 1995.

Respected military analysts, from the Brookings Institution's Lawrence Korb to Harvard's William Kaufmann, argue that if changes in the Soviet Union continue, under the best-case projections, the military can make far deeper cuts over the next decade without endangering Western security. The Pentagon, says Kaufmann, could save as much as 10% in 1991, 25% by 1995 and up to 50% by the year 2000. Some of these reductions -- in Army divisions, in the Navy's outmoded battleships -- would produce savings almost immediately. More significant cuts take longer because they involve the ships, planes and weapons scheduled to come on line over a period of years. Says Congressman Aspin: "Defense is by nature long-range planning. A decision you make today produces a ship in ten years." All the more reason to begin serious planning now.

There is no single way to cut the defense budget, but there are many obvious places for the Administration and Congress to start. If the following changes were made, the defense budget could be sliced by a third to a half over the next decade, falling as low as $150 billion (in current dollars) by the year 2000:

-- The armed forces' 2 million manpower could be halved. The Army could shed three divisions immediately (rather than the two that Cheney proposed) and eight more of its present 18 divisions by 2000. The Army's troops alone could drop from 758,000 now to fewer than 400,000. Saving: $35 billion.

-- The Army could reduce its inventory of tanks, artillery pieces and other weapons as part of the arms-control process in Europe. The 60-ton M-1 Abrams tank, in particular, was designed for massive armor battles in Europe. It was of no use in the invasion of Panama because it is too big. Cheney has already recommended canceling future production. Saving: more than $6 billion by 1995 for the M-1 alone.

-- The Marine Corps could be cut from three divisions to two in 2000, one based on each coast of the U.S. Saving: $1.2 billion annually.

-- The bulk of U.S. forces could be stationed at home. Late in the decade U.S. forces will probably be completely out of South Korea and greatly reduced from the 50,000 currently in Japan. The U.S. has begun discussions with South Korea about withdrawing some 5,000 of the 43,000 American troops on duty there. Saving: $6 billion annually.

-- The Navy could reduce its aircraft-carrier fleet from 14 to six -- essentially one battle group apiece, plus replacements and training fleets, for the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Mediterranean. That would still allow it to fulfill its traditional assignments of keeping sea-lanes open, as in the Persian Gulf, or striking quickly at a distant foe, like Libya. But the admirals will have to give up former Navy Secretary John Lehman's "maritime strategy," which sought to send U.S. warships into Soviet waters to launch strikes against targets deep inside the U.S.S.R. Saving: $21 billion.

-- With U.S. and Soviet nuclear warheads shrinking to half their present levels after a START treaty, the U.S. could press ahead for a ban on land- based MIRVed missiles. A ban would significantly favor the U.S. in numerical terms because the Soviets have far more of these monsters, such as the SS-18, which carries more than ten warheads. A MIRV ban would do away with existing U.S. missile systems like the ten-warhead MX and the triple-warhead Minuteman III. The cost of dismantling these existing systems would effectively cancel out the relatively small saving in operating costs. Saving: none.

-- Trident submarines, with their new, highly accurate eight-warhead D-5 missiles, should be considered the firmest leg of the nuclear triad, offsetting any vulnerability of the land-based ICBMs and the huge cost of ever more sophisticated bombers. Even William Webster, the CIA's cautious director, has said that the Soviet Union will be "unable, at least in this decade, to threaten U.S. subs in the open ocean." But no new Tridents are necessary for the remainder of the '90s, and the U.S. should immediately kill the rest of the procurement program. Saving: $1.4 billion.

-- Research for the Strategic Defense Initiative could be cut from $4.5 billion to $3 billion a year. This research should focus on developing technology, with no deployment necessary in this decade. Saving: $1.5 billion a year.

-- Army attempts to build an antisatellite weapon would be put on hold. The U.S. depends far more heavily than the Soviet Union on satellites for intelligence and communications. It would have far more to lose in any competition with Moscow to see who could build the deadliest satellite killers. Saving: $1.4 billion.

Alas, all three services are still enamored of ultra-complex, ultra- expensive weapons systems. The argument used to be that only the highest of high-tech weapons could offset the Soviets' heavy superiority in numbers -- no matter how suspect some of that Soviet power might have been. Now that the numerical superiority may be negotiated away, at least in Europe, the services are trying to find new arguments for the dollar devourers.

Making matters worse, the Defense Department is committed to spending $124 billion in the next decade for hardware such as the Navy's pricey ($60 billion for the program) A-12 attack aircraft, and the LHX helicopter, a beleaguered program that threatens to gobble up $42 billion over the next five years. Most of this money is not even anticipated in the current budget. As such programs are scratched or stretched out, the Pentagon faces enormous cancellation fees to contractors. Some of these weapons have already consumed millions of dollars in research and development.

One revolutionary approach to the usual research-develop-and-produce syndrome has been advocated by Aspin and backed by several experts outside the Pentagon. It is called "develop -- but wait." Perform the R. and D., in short, but go to production only if the imagined threat clearly emerges and if the cost is manageable. A more idealistic version advocated by Seth Bonder, president of a Michigan think tank called Vector Research, would encourage the Pentagon to invest in R. and D. but actually build new weapons only if they would correct an impending imbalance with the Soviet Union; it should pass up those that would give the U.S. a destabilizing military advantage.

This approach might justify not building more than one advanced Seawolf attack submarine. The reliable Los Angeles class is still the best attack sub in the world, fully capable of protecting American vessels against enemy prowlers.

Similarly, the Navy and Air Force could slow the development of their new generation of advanced aircraft. The Navy's F-14 fighter, still in production, and the A-6 attack jet, which the Navy wants to phase out, are more than merely adequate. Nor does the venerable Air Force F-15 interceptor need to be replaced by a proposed Advanced Tactical Fighter. These grand projects could easily be kept on hold for ten years or more. The Air Force should also forget its new C-17 cargo plane, which costs $318 million, and stay with the long- proven and dependable C-141 and C-5.

Military strategists complain that they have to shape plans for a decade in a situation that changes explosively from week to week. But that danger is no excuse for not beginning to draw up a strategic plan to guide the reductions that a budget crunch is forcing on the U.S. no less than on the Soviet Union. Nor should it be allowed to obscure the happy prospects now beckoning Washington and Moscow alike.

An eloquent emphasis on the once-in-a-lifetime nature of the current circumstances was expressed last month by a career fighting man, General John Galvin, the American commander of NATO's unified forces. "If you're looking for the personification of the cold war, here I am," he said. "I'm seeing ) now the possibility that we can bring all of this to a close. If we can get 35 nations to sign on the dotted line on something that is irreversible and verifiable, and bring down the levels of armaments to a mere fraction of what they are today, then we really have achieved something that's worth all the sacrifices."

It is not often that a general shows such passion about cutting the forces under his command. That is but one indication of the historic opportunity facing America's political leadership. For once they should feel inspired to look ahead, not back at the last war.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Chart by Deborah L. Wells and Nigel Holmes

CAPTION: FOUR WAYS TO SAVE

What would the military give up if Washington imposed cuts far deeper than those Cheney suggested last week? Here are several scenarios:

With reporting by Jay Peterzell and Bruce van Voorst/Washington