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Defense Strategy in an Uncertain World
| Article
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20487 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1992 |
3,862 Words |
| Author
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Doublas M. Johnston
Douglas M. Johnston is executive vice president of the Center
for Strategic and International Studies. He also chairs the
center's Maritime Studies Program. |
As the United States approaches its moment of truth this November, one is struck by the near absence from the presidential debates of any reference to an international security environment, the complexion of which has changed almost to the point of nonrecognition. In only a matter of months, the post-World War II era ended with the spectacular, yet surprisingly subdued, collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The demise, further, of the Soviet Union itself occurred with such speed that it left the strategists as breathless as the mapmakers. In some ways, though, the world America sees today is no less dangerous than it was before the Warsaw Pact's collapse.
With bipolarity now a thing of the past, instability is already appearing in new forms and old guises, as historic and volatile antagonisms find new expression. Ironically though, the United States still faces major security challenges in the post-Cold War world, and does so across an even broader range of uncertainty and with fewer defense dollars. To meet this challenge, America will have to remain engaged internationally and adjust its defense strategy accordingly--excellent, but largely neglected campaign grist for the candidates.
Aura Versus Threat
Juxtaposed with this reality is an understandable fixation on domestic concerns, with increasing pressure to bring the troops home and make even deeper cuts in the defense budget. A little more than a year ago, Samuel Huntington outlined the dilemma: "The problem for the United States is to reduce its military involvement in Eurasia, which was required to contain Soviet power in the second half of this century, without producing the American absence from Europe that led to two world wars in the first half of the century."
Much of the contemporary defense debate revolves around the central issue of how, if at all, this standard can be met. At one end of the spectrum has been a strange combination of would-be presidential contenders, with liberal Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin and conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan both calling for an isolationist foreign policy and an annual defense budget well under $200 billion. At the other end, President Bush is offering more modest revisions (most recently $43 billion in cumulative savings from fiscal 1993 through 1997, superimposed on the overall 25 percent reduction already programmed). A "Base Force" of 1.6 million persons represents the minimum force the Bush administration claims "would be needed to further democracy and our national interests in a post-Cold
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