Shopping for Defense

President Clinton, it would seem, has had a conversion experience–one that leaves many of his overworked and overwrought supporters feeling more betrayed than usual. After six years of trashing the military and blowing off the putative alarmists and doom-sayers, he now finds the world so threatening that, as he recently told the New York Times, he stays up at night worrying about it. And he now considers defense such a good thing that he wants more of it.
Lots more.

Or does he? Let’s work the problem. What has he proposed? Does he mean it? Can he deliver? And will it matter?

We lead off with money. (In Washington, DC, success is measured by input, not output.) In fiscal 1999, for the first time in well over a decade, real defense spending has risen. It will easily exceed $300 billion after all the supplemental appropriations and other dodges are tallied. Mr. Clinton wants to pump an additional $12 billion or so into the fiscal 2000 budget, plus $110 billion more over the next six years.

Does he mean it? Sure, why not? He can promise anything he wants for after (at the latest) January 20th, 2001. He won’t have to deliver. And it’s doubtful that he can get another $12 billion through Congress this year, even if the economy stays strong and the budget surplus isn’t completely squandered on other troughs. Capitol Hill is rarely averse to funding its own porcine priorities – in fact, Congress routinely adds a ten percent handling charge to the Pentagon request. But serious increases remain tendentious. Neither the social-programs left nor the fiscal-pinching right seems noticeably enthralled.

Does the money matter? Yes and no. Funds allocated for personnel compensation and the more mundane aspects of readiness (maintenance, spare parts, training, selective procurement) would be well spent. However, after fifteen years of living off the Reagan investment, the bigger ticket item is now modernization. Unfortunately, without a fundamental reform of everything from force structure to procurement practices, we will invest hundreds of billions propping up a still mostly Industrial Age, still mostly Cold War, still obscenely wasteful defense establishment.

The Clinton administration had six years to drag the Pentagon into the 21st century. They didn’t fail. They never really tried. Unless the next administration compels serious reform, much of that $110 billion (assuming it ever materializes) will go for overpriced junk, or vanish entirely.

But Mr. Clinton’s sudden desire to toss money at the Pentagon seems far less of a reversal than his ballistic missile defense epiphany. In effect, he has validated the findings of the independent Rumsfeld Commission, and of a corps of prophets in the think tank and advocacy worlds. The foreign missile threat is both real and imminent.

In fine Clinton fashion, he has not admitted he was wrong. Also true to form, he has shuffled up a proposal for bigger bucks: $6 to $10 billion or so more, over the next few years.

And, in classic Clinton style, he has instructed the Pentagon to sorta kinda think about maybe making a decision around 2000 or 200l or so to maybe deploy something or other around 2003 or 2005. Or maybe not. Once again, he has promised what he won’t be around to deliver while neglecting what he can do right now:

Deploy an interim defense based upon the Navy’s Aegis fleet defense system; consolidate and fast-track the various ground-based interceptor programs; and get ready to put a lot of stuff into space.

Of course, this would violate the 1972 ABM Treaty, long the holiest idol in the arms control pantheon. But Mr. Clinton has decided that this needn’t be an obstacle. We’ll renegotiate the Treaty with the Russians. However, this is unnecessary. There is no ABM Treaty in force. There hasn’t been since the USSR collapsed.

Under international law, there are two approaches to the treaty obligations of nations that experience military conquest or revolutionary changes of regime: clean-slate or still-in-force. However, the USSR was neither conquered nor changed by revolution. It was a multinational empire that disintegrated. Neither Russia nor the other three nuclear successor states (Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan), nor all together could fulfill the requirements of the Treaty, even if they wanted to.

As a practical matter, we should consult closely with these states. But the ABM Treaty itself–pure history.

Finally–an idea that has the civil libertarians more than usually apocalyptic–Mr. Clinton has agreed to consider a Pentagon proposal to establish a military command (of some sort) for the defense of the continental United States.

In this area, the Clinton administration has been quiet, but far from quiescent. The 90s have seen a plethora of laws passed and organizations created to handle homeland defense. Many are matters of public record. But when was the last time you heard about the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Act, or recent amendments to posse comitatus (the ban on using the military for law enforcement), or the White House counter-terrorism czar, or the Operations, Readiness and Mobilization Directorate, or the Joint Task Force for Civil Support?

A good idea to create a homeland defense command of some sort? Probably. But it won’t happen on Bill Clinton’s watch. He’s just considering considering it.

So why’s he doing all this? Perhaps we should take him at his word. Belatedly, perilously so, he has come to accept two facts of post Cold War life. First, there are people out there who wish us ill. And second, like it or not, we must engage in a bizarre, asymmetrical arms race with them. We’re mostly out of the WMD (weapons of mass destruction) business. They’re into it. We either put together a package of defenses (military and nonmilitary) to thwart nuclear, chemical and biological attacks, or we resign ourselves to the greatest carnage on this continent since the Civil War.

Certainly, Mr. Clinton does not want to go down in history as the man who let it happen. Perhaps he’s merely posturing for history, spinning the horrors to come. But maybe not.

As for those of you who’ve forgiven him everything because the economy’s good, and who approve of how he’s done his job . . .

Consider this your wake-up call.