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18 / THEWEEKLYSTANDARD MAY20, 2002

PRESIDENT BUSH has made plainfrom the start that the war onterrorism will be long and

large. What he seems reluctant toadmit is that it will also be expensive.

Since September 11, the UnitedStates has routed the Taliban and al

Qaeda in Afghanistan, committedthousands of troops to assist in thefight against terror groups in thePhilippines, Georgia, and elsewhere,and stationed aircraft in Kyrgyzstan,Uzbekistan, and Bulgaria. The U.S.military presence in the Persian Gulfhas been strengthened, and prepara-tions for the destruction of SaddamHusseins regime and some sort ofdemocratic reconstruction in Iraq areunderway. In case the Saudis wont

cooperate, alternate airfields andcommand centers are being readiedin Turkey and the Gulf emirates.

Yet despite these expanded com-mitments and the tensions mountingthroughout the Middle East, not tomention President Bushs fiercerhetoric, the implications of a largerwar seem to a remarkable degree loston Washington. Neither the adminis-tration nor Congress treats the war asa reason to accelerate the rebuildingand reform of the U.S. armed forces.

The great gap between strategic endsand military means inherited fromthe Clinton years remains. The Pen-tagons budget shortfalls affect every-thing from its most immediate needsto its hopes for long-term moderniza-tion and transformation.

From the start, the administrationhas failed to acknowledge the likely

true cost of the war. Its originalwartime supplemental defense appro-priation of $20 billion was notenough; the estimated costs ofAfghanistan alone quickly exceeded$2 billion per month. Yet recently,the Office of Management and Bud-

get cut 30 percent from the extrafunding required to cover the reserveand National Guard mobilizationafter September 11. Defense Secre-tary Donald Rumsfeld has thereforechosen to send 14,000 soldiers homeearly, rather than reduce other pro-grams to cover the $1.5 billion tokeep them on the job.

Though the president touts his2003 defense budget request, it willdo little more than fund the Clinton

program. When immediate war costsand past budget gimmicks are fac-tored inthings like mandatory per-sonnel and health care coststherequested $48 billion increaseshrinks to about $10 billion worth ofnew capability.

This is consistent with the admin-istrations narrow view of militaryrequirements prior to September 11.George W. Bush campaigned on apromise to skip a generation ofweapons. Now it appears the only

program slated for cancellation is theill-starred Crusader howitzer, and theBush administration plans no near-term expansion of the military.

In particular, Rumsfeld opposesany increase in the number of active-duty troops. Two weeks ago he told agroup of soldiers, Resources arealways finite, and the question is,would we be better off increasingmanpower or increasing capabilityand lethality?

The trouble is that todays varied

missions require lots of manpower.The failure to complete the victory inAfghanistan is partly due to theadministrations reluctance to send insufficient numbers of U.S. troops andkeep them there. Any campaign in

Iraq will pose similar challenges.Even the victory in the Balkansremains at issue because of doubtsamong local factions about our will-ingness to keep troops there in suffi-cient numbers.

Indeed, the Joint Chiefs of Staffsay they need at least 50,000 moresoldiers, sailors, airmen, andMarines. Gen. William Kernan, whooversees 80 percent of the forces sta-tioned in the United States, recentlytold Congress we have an over-

stretched military, struggling tokeep up with the demands of globaloperations and fraying around theedges.

In an internal Pentagon memo,Rumsfeld went even further: We arepast the point where the Departmentcan, without an unbelievably com-pelling reason, make any additionalcommitments. With estimates of thetroops needed for Iraq ranging from75,000 to 250,000, its hard to know

exactly what to make of this state-ment except that there are too fewmen in uniform.

The long-term budget outlook iseven bleaker. The Bush request for2003 would push defense spending to3.5 percent of gross domestic prod-uctup from 3 percent in Clintonslast years but down from 4.4 percentas late as 1994. Moreover, the Bushdefense numbers are now projectedto decline, reaching 3.3 percent in2006. At those levels, the Pentagon

will be short of firepower as well asmanpower; the Crusader may be justthe first of the larger programs to go.

Merely to pay for the tactical air-craft whose purchase is alreadyplanned wont be possible under suchbudgets. One result is that all the ser-vices contemplate reducing their par-ticipation in the multi-service JointStrike Fighter program. The AirForce wants to protect its F-22 fighterprogram and would prefer to build a

strike version of the plane. The Navy

Put Your Money

Where Your War IsThe underfunded Bush Doctrine.BY GARY SCHMITT AND TOM DONNELLY

Gary Schmitt is executive director, and Tom

Donnelly is deputy director, of the Project for

the New American Century.

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THEWEEKLYSTANDARD/ 19MAY20, 2002

has announced its intention to cut itsbuy of JSFs from 1,600 to 1,100.Struggling with a shortage of carrieraircraft, the Navy prefers a bird inthe hand, the upgraded F/A-18 nowin production, to two in the bush in

the form of the JSF, whose produc-tion is probably a decade away. TheNavy also needs to build new vari-ants of the F/A-18 for missions it nowmeets with creaking Vietnam-eraEA-6B planes. And even the MarineCorps, though it would welcome the JSF to replace the Harrier, wouldrather have the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotortroop transport, a program theMarines are endeavoring to save (notleast from their own mismanage-ment) and to fund.

In sum, the JSF is everyones sec-ond priority within the military. Butits outright cancellation is probablynot in the cards. The program hastremendous support among U.S.alliesGreat Britain alone is invest-ing billions in developmentaddinga complicating political dimension toany reckoning of the planes value.

And then theres the poor Army.The only good news for soldiers isthat the Quadrennial Defense Review

of 2001 did not shrink forces further.But the termination of the Crusaderhowitzer will leave ground forcesincreasingly forced to rely upon airpower for close-in cover. According-ly, the Army soon will have no choicebut to change the way it fights.Ground commanders are likely to bemore cautious than before, reluctantto maneuver when air cover is notimmediately on call. It is amazingthat a B-2 bomber based in Missourican fly for days to attack targets in

Kosovo or Afghanistan, but soldiersin a tight spot can be forgiven forpreferring fire support on the groundwhich they control. Finally, provid-ing air support in bad weather or atnight is still an imperfect science. Tomake the most of the advantages U.S.ground troops gain from their abilityto fight at night, they need their ownfire support.

The bottom line: The UnitedStates is not spending enough on

defense. If defense spending doesnt

rise appreciably, we will buy smallerand smaller quantities of each sys-tem, forcing up unit costs and opera-tional costs, all the while drivingwhat equipment we have into theground.

Nor can we transform our wayout of this predicament. The editorialpages of theNew York Times notwith-standing, the revolution in militaryaffairs is no cheap fix. For example,all those space-related assets Rums-felds team wants are expensive; andadvanced unmanned aerial vehi-clesthe fighters and bombers of thefutureare projected to cost as muchas F-16s. People are kidding them-selves if they think transformationwill magically close the gap between

available resources and militaryrequirements.

For more than a decade now, theUnited States has wanted to believethat its various military deploymentsaround the globe were temporary

special cases, rather than the rule forthe post-Cold War world. We nowknow better. Yet instead of adding tothe militarys ranks, we have beentreating the reserves and NationalGuard as though they were active

duty forces. This cant last. Thosefolks signed up to defend the home-land and help out in national emer-gencies; they didnt sign up to beglobal soldiers, on call 24/7.

America cannot exercise globalleadership on the cheap. The UnitedStates is blessed with unprecedentedpower, rich allies in every corner ofthe world, and political principlesthat appeal to the universal desire forfreedom. But these goods are not self-perpetuating, they are the fruits of

success in war. The Bush Doctrinewill eventually ring hollow unless itis backed by renewed militarystrength. The administration needsto start putting its money where thepresidents mouth is.