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“There always were two questions about the Bottom Up Review,” Les Aspin told me in a recent interview, referring to the blueprint for the post-Cold War military prepared last year while he was secretary of defense.
“Was the force structure in the Bottom Up Review sufficient to deal with two [major regional] contingencies we anticipate? [And] if we [got] the budgets in the Bottom Up Review, would they buy us that force structure?”
Aspin said he is confident the answer to the first question is yes. He is becoming increasingly concerned about the answer to the second.
“I’ve gone over [force structure] very carefully,” he said, referring to the Bottom Up Review’s call for a 12-carrier Navy, 10-division Army, and 13-wing Air Force. “We wargamed it to very conservative assumptions—very conservative. [For example,] we counted the American soldier as 1.0 and the South Korean soldier as .7, which I think sounds about right. But then we took a North Korean and counted him as 1.0. I mean, give us a break! The North Korean soldier is better than the South Korean soldier?
And as good as the American?”
“So, if the American public pays for that force structure, will it handle the contingencies? I’m very comfortable with ‘yes.’”
But Aspin isn’t at all sure now that planned Defense budgets will be enough to pay for the Bottom Up Review force structure: “I’m worried about that,” he said. Even while unveiling the Bottom Up Review last September, Aspin conceded that President Clinton’s five-year Defense plan was at least $20 billion short of funding the required force structure. Since then, more money has been earmarked for pay increases, “and there have been other raids on the money—outside-of-the-military raids. They have to go spend it on other things.”
Some critics say the real Achilles’ heel of the Bottom Up Review is a shortage of sealift and airlift. Aspin said there are shortages now but such criticism misses the point. “It’s going to take a while to adjust,” he said. “As we start out, we’ll also have an Army that’s too big for the two [major regional conflicts]. We’ll [also] have not enough airlift and sealift, because in the old days, we knew we were going to fight in Europe and had the stuff all pre-positioned.”
“But you can’t take a magic wand and make it happen. It’s going to take years [both] to get the airlift and sealift and to downsize the Army.”
Regarding his responsibilities today, Aspin described himself as “the new Bill Crowe.” When retired Admiral William Crowe, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, became ambassador to Great Britain earlier this year, Aspin assumed Crowe’s
responsibilities on several fronts. He moved into the Arleigt1 Burke chair, vacated by Crowe, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This is Bill Crowe’s old office,” Aspin1 J. said.
Like Crowe, Aspin is teaching at a university, Marquette, part time. He succeeded Crowe as chairman of the President’s c Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. There, however, he’ll be 1 kept busier than his predecessor. He’s been tasked by the e President to conduct what Aspin called a “bottom-up review 1 of the U.S. intelligence community in the post-Cold War era. j
New Defense Chief Sets New Priorities ,
Les Aspin never did score high on the warm-and-fuzzy meter with military people—going back to his early days as a young 1 congressman who attacked military retirement as overly gen- ' erous and proposed eliminating the commissary.
His image with the rank-and-file didn’t improve last year 1 when, as Secretary of Defense, he went along with the Clinton i administration’s call for no military pay raise in 1994, followed 1
by four years of pay caps.
“The focus was on the deficit. I think that was the right focus,” Aspin said. ' With then-White House Budget Director Leon Panetta pushing hard for an across-the-board federal pay freeze, “there was no way [to fight] on that one.”
But the current Secretary of Defense, William Perry. 1 clearly feels differently. On 23 August, Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch ap- 1 peared before the Pentagon press corps to confirm Perry’s intention to delay of kill the purchase of several major weapons programs to free budget dollars for “readiness” military pay and quality-of-life programs for our troops.’
Every Defense team claims military people come first; Perry and Deutch seem to mean it. They have asked the White House to shelve its plan to cap military pay raises 1.5% below civilian wage growth; they want no deterioration in training; they want a full inventory of spare parts and equipment properly maintained. If Congress won’t provide enough money to do these things and buy new weapon systems, Perry wants hardware to take the hit.
This could mean cancellation of the Army’s new Comanche helicopter and Advanced Field Artillery System, a reduced buy of Arleigh Burke (DDG-51)-class destroyers, a four-year delay in the purchase of the Air Force’s F-22 fighter, and cancellation of the Marine Corps’ V-22 Osprey aircraft.
Deutch said Perry has visited with U.S. forces around the ) world and is convinced that adequate pay and quality-of-life issues are keys to sustaining readiness—more so than weapons modernization.
“With money tight,” said Deutch, “we are choosing people over systems.”
Focusing on the deficit, Les Aspin (left) supported the call for a military pay freeze. Current Secretary of Defense William Perry (center) and Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch, however, are convinced that quality-of-life issues are a top priority for our troops.