Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 7, 1990 TAG: 9005070251
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: R. JEFFREY SMITH THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Army Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a recent interview that "every single hardware system," military base, and operational doctrine - down to the wording of each field manual - should be up for grabs in a review aimed at ending or modifying programs and expenditures suited only to the military threat that existed at the height of the Cold War, or as recently as 1986.
Powell said such a review could be used to restructure a U.S. military force to roughly three-quarters its current size within four to five years, without endangering national security. At the same time, he indicated, it would help fend off congressional demands for much steeper spending and force cuts.
"What I'm trying to put across to the department is [the military threat] really is different," Powell said in explaining one of the strongest calls for U.S. military reform by any Bush administration official to date.
Coming just as President Bush urged a sweeping review of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's European mission, Powell's remarks suggest an unusual level of anxiety and introspection in the administration over changes in the political landscape engendered by recent East bloc political and military reforms.
Although Powell did not cite specific dollar amounts during the interview at his Pentagon office, a 20 to 25 percent spending cut could reduce the current $291 billion budget by as much as $73 billion. Defense Secretary Richard Cheney has already proposed reducing the current budget by 2 percent each year through A8 A1 DEFENSE Defense 1997 after taking into account the effects of inflation.
The House of Representatives, amid growing calls for a "peace dividend," last week approved a spending plan for the next fiscal year that would trim $8 billion from the current Pentagon budget and $24 billion from the administration's proposed level.
Powell, who has seldom presented his own ideas about military restructuring in public, did not directly address the House action. He said he is not opposed to reasonable spending cuts because "I think increasingly we can wipe away from our eyes . . . these `evil empire' filters that we used for many, many years" to view the Soviet military threat.
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's political reforms and military restructuring mean "I don't have to think of them as my enemy . . . [as] a real and present danger who's coming at me tomorrow," Powell explained.
Although the Defense Department has already scaled back some of its most costly weapons programs in response to the expected withdrawal of Soviet forces from Eastern Europe, "we know we have to get smaller," Powell said. "We can go down considerably."
He also warned, however, that "some people in town are trying to put this [budget] in too steep a dive," which, he said, will wreak havoc on an all-volunteer force that has taken a dozen years to build. In remarks clearly aimed at Capitol Hill, Powell said, "You're going to break this force if you ask us to do it too quickly."
He said that eventually, the United States could, and probably would, cut its troops in Europe below 215,000, a number that the Bush administration until now has said was the minimum prudent level for the foreseeable future. He said that additional Army divisions would be eliminated, many military bases will be closed, weapons stockpiles will dwindle, and shipbuilding will slow.
These changes are feasible because current Soviet and Warsaw Pact reforms will give the United States up to a year of "political and strategic warning" before any offensive Soviet military action in Europe, instead of the previously expected two weeks of "tactical warning."
Powell said "Secretary Cheney and I have been talking . . . for months" about the exact composition of a minimum force of men and equipment needed to meet U.S. military requirements into the 21st century. He said their aim, in the present atmosphere of declining support for military spending, was to determine a level below that "you can't go any further."
While explaining that he did not want to reveal his views on future budgets for each military service and function, Powell said he believed a "fundamental break point" would occur "somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe a 20 to 25 percent reduction from where we are now" in both force size and military expenditures.
"When you get down to the very small numbers" being urged by some legislators and independent analysts, Powell said, "you're not talking about a coherent fighting force. . . . There is a base level below which you can't go . . . because we are a superpower with worldwide interests."
Powell has said he envisions the future U.S. military having four principal components:
A so-called "heavy" force capable of fighting a medium- to high-intensity conflict across the Atlantic, equipped with tactical nuclear weapons.
A somewhat "lighter" force capable of defending U.S. interests in the Pacific, including U.S. troops and equipment in Korea and Hawaii.
A "contingency" force, capable of rapid deployment from U.S. territory into military hot spots such as Panama.
A "strategic" force of nuclear weapons to deter superpower conflict.
Powell said "one of the major points I hope to get across with that kind of formulation" is that the military's present capability "to operate in a high- to mid-intensity conflict . . . is a national asset we have to have whether or not there are 13 Soviet armies poised in the Fulda Gap," a geographical region on the border between East and West Germanys long viewed as the principal route of a Warsaw Pact invasion.
Powell's plans for the other U.S. forces are similar to those advanced recently by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn, D-Ga., who Powell said "has some interesting ideas." But the two disagree sharply over Nunn's call for a reduction of U.S. ground forces in Europe from 300,000 to 75,000, something Powell called "much too premature."
"Some people say, just have a few reception units over there and wait for the reserves to come. Well, I don't support that. I think that if you are going to have a military presence in Europe, it ought . . . to be a force that looks like it can fight," Powell said.
He nonetheless favors reassessing the reserve forces and the Army's principal combat doctrines, known as Forward Defense and Follow-On Forces Attack. Reforms are possible in virtually "every functional area, training, communications, how rapidly . . . you modernize your [naval] fleets," he added.
An especially inviting target, Powell indicated, is the "waste" and "unnecessary expense" associated with outmoded military bases. "A lot of our base structure is post-Indian War and post-World War II," he said.
Powell, a national security adviser under former president Ronald Reagan who said he wants to cooperate with the Soviets and "be open with them," indicated he is occasionally at odds with others at the Pentagon who resist this approach.
Instead of viewing the Soviets as our enemy, he said, "I want to deal straight up with them as businessmen . . . like two real estate lawyers closing a deal. I want title insurance, I want a termite inspector."
Powell said, "The problem we have is everybody wearing a uniform now has spent from the last one year . . . to the last 35 years thinking about this in a different context."
He said Cheney has not received enough credit for bringing about "a fundamental philosophical change in the way this building has done its business . . . in terms of getting us to think negative real growth as opposed to wishing positive real growth."
by CNB