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How Much National Security Does America Need?
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10713 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1993 |
3,167 Words |
| Author
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Dov S. Zakheim
Dov S. Zakheim, a former deputy under secretary of defense, is
chief executive officer of SPC International Corporation in
Arlington, Virginia, and adjunct scholar at the Heritage
Foundation. |
In many ways, the Clinton administration's defense program is a throwback to the pre-Korean War Truman era. It sees the United States standing alone as the as the world's superpower. It intends to focus on economic security and has established an economic security council. Military threats appear relatively minor. Washington contemplates military operations out of choice not necessity. Panama, Somalia, arguably even Iraq (and certainly Bosnia if the United States gets involved) were contingencies that were not forced upon the United States. America chose to intervene, to form coalitions, to apply military force.
Clinton announced, before taking office, that he planned to reduce by $68 billion over five years the Bush defense budget, which itself was a reduction of $10.6 billion from the previous year. Once ensconced in the While House, Clinton has gone even further. He has virtually doubled his original reduction, to $127 billion, with $88 billion to be cut by fiscal year (FY) 1997.
In July 1949, Harry Truman's new administration initially set the U.S. defense budget for FY 1951 at $37 billion of the last wartime budget (FY 1946). By then the United States certainly recognized a communist threat to western Europe, but sought to counter it primarily through assistance programs, notably the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. With America the world's unchallenged superpower, and with the extent of the Soviet military threat to Europe still uncertain, Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson saw no reason to interrupt a draw down that had begun shortly after the triumphant conclusion of World War II.
Within a year, however, everything changed. In September 1949 the United States learned that the Soviet had exploded an atomic bomb. The following April, Truman received from an interagency staff the document NSC-68, which established America's containment strategy for years to come. Three defense later, in June 1950, North Korea attacked the South. The defense budget for 1951 more than tripled, to $45.2 billion. It rose again the following year, to $57 billion. Cold War funding had begun in earnest.
Kim II Sung, the man who started the Korean War, must be viewing current developments with some amusement from his long-standing perch in Pyongyang. He has seen it all before.
REDUCE OR NOT?
There is certainly a strong case for reducing defense force
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