The Pentagon runs off with the purse

Press, 12 March 1982, Page 12

The Pentagon runs off with the purse

By

HAROLD JACKSON

in “The Guardian,” London

In a .farewell broadcast* to the nation as-he handed over to John Kennedy, President Eisenhower gave his countrymeh a warning against a new factor in the American experience — “the conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.” “We must,” he said, “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex, against the temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current .difficulties.” When he spoke in 1961, the Pentagon’s entire budget was $44,000 million.

By one of those historic flukes, this is exactly the sum by which President Reagan proposes to increase defence spending this year, to the incredible total of $221,000 million. And, with that increase, has come a conviction among Congressmen and others that they have spent the past 21 years failing to heed the grim warning of the last soldier-president. In the words of Senator Gary Hart, a Democratic member of the Armed Services Committee, “a growing number of my Congressional colleagues have come to feel that there is something profoundly wrong. Vietnam and the failed Iranian rescue attempt attest to some deep-seated problems in our armed services.” Congressman Thomas Downey of the House of Representatives defence task force has spoken out against “our inability to control mindless, amoral, technological momentum.” Rear Admiral Gene Larocque and Marine General William Fairbourn head a group opposed to the current levels of arms spending. “We believe that strong social, economic and political structures contribute equally to

", national security and are essential to the strength and welfare of our country.” General David Jones, about . to retire as chairman of the . Joint Chiefs of Staff, has written a despairing farewell com- , ment on the services’ incurable • '“intramural scramble for resources.” The military system, he noted, “has been remarkably resistant to change . . . with an understandable desire to promote organisational interests, preserve their sovereignty, and conserve hard-won prerogatives.” The fear underlying much of this comment is that confusion of military purpose will leave America with defence forces whose cost has fatally undermined the domestic political consensus and yet which remain incapable of maintaining the peace — the worst of all worlds, in fact. There are a number of case studies to show how the territorial imperatives of the services, the vast financial interests of the corporations, and the past 20 years of chopping and. changing political control have combined to produce a monster which sometimes seems to threaten everything in its path. The first example — and potentially the most hair-rais-ing — comes from the nuclear arsenal. The basic problem both sides are trying to resolve is that modern missiles have achieved an extraordinary accuracy: it is quite possible to contemplate destroying much of the opponent’s weaponry in its silos. The options, therefore, are to build a defensive system or to develop impregnable missiles. Anti-ballistic missiles are ruled out by the Soviet American treaty of 1972, so the alternative' chosen by the Americans was the MX mobile missile. The idea was to move it around randomly to confuse Russian targeters. Mr Reagan has abandoned that idea and

proposes to put the MX in existing Minuteman silos. He has also decided, under Congressional budget pressure, 'against strengthening the silos to withstand a near miss, so much of the logic of the MX has disappeared. But this year’s budget allows $4460 million for its development. Flowing from those decisions there is already talk of breaking the ABM treaty to embark on the mind-numbingly expensive task of developing antimissile missiles, a course that would drastically shift the current uneasy balance between the super-Powers. But the problem goes far beyond that. The very defencelessness of the MX could change its strategic purpose: the pressure on the White House has now shifted to the old military doctrine of “use ’em or lose ’em” or, in modern jargon, first strike capability. The temptation to shoot first has also developed in an apparently casual way from the decision to modernise the American submarine missile force, at a cost of $30,000 million. Eventually each of the new fleet of Trident submarines will be equipped with 24 D-5 missiles (also known as the Trident II) bearing a total destructive power of 20 megatons — 1000 times the power that wiped out Hiroshima. This will offer the Americans a wholly new option: they will have a highly-accurate weapon capable of hitting Soviet silos and, because it is submarine-launched, with a possible flight time of 10 minutes instead of the halfhour needed by the land-based MX. To the layman, it may sound a distinction without a difference, but it is of considerable strategic consequence. There is no need for - the accuracy of the MX or the D-5 other than to knock out silos. With that, short a warning, the Kremlin would have little

chance to get its bombers into the air, which would reduce its power to retaliate, and thus increase pressure on the Russians to go for a first strike in their turn. The point is that these changes have come about almost by happenstance, not because anyone actually sat down to consider them. Technology and military-industrial pressure have ruled. The development time of modern weaponry — which can be up to 20 years — virtually ensures that it evades democratic control. In America this is heightened by the separation of powers.

One of .the arguments put forward by Senator Hart, for example, is that the underlying

military doctrine of the Pentagon is wrong. “Our doctrine in the field is based on ‘firepower attrition,’ the object being to destroy the enemy man by man. But this style is badly outdated: we can’t overwhelm the Soviet Union with superiority in manpower and equipment, we need a different style — manoeuvre warfare.” There are military leaders who agree and there have recently been secret briefings for Congressmen and the N.A.T.O. allies on a fundamental shift of United States Army tactics to something nearer the Israeli concept of self-sustain-ing brigade units. The Army is whipping up enthusiasm about how it will be able to run rings round ponderous Soviet units,

. but outsiders cannot but wonder how this will fit in with the equipment now rolling off the conveyor lines. The essence of manoeuvrability is that the troops can operate without the need to stop too often for supplies or repairs. The story of the M-l tank has been aired often enough to show how little it fits that requirement — it cannot run more than 40 miles without a breakdown, uses four gallons of petrol to the mile and so requires endless fuel supplies, is so complicated, as to be unserviceable in the field and, costing well over $2 million itself, still needs a $1 million bulldozer as a protective companion piece. There is a strong suspicion that the saga of the M-l had as much to do with propping up its manufacturers, the Chrysler Corporation, as with the need for a new battle tank. The military dollar penetrates every corner of American business: it is hardly surprising that General Dynamics, maker of the F-16 and the F--111, had $3OOO million worth of Pentagon contracts last year. But what about $387,000 to Hertz Rent-a-Car or $220,000 to Granny Goose Foods Inc? There is never a Congressional session passes without some new revelation of military inefficiency, bumbledom, or venality. But the row still focuses largely on the profligacy of the Defence Department rather than the dangers it generates from the lack of proper quality control. What will happen if the new manoeuvrable American units are so let down by their equipment that they run a serious danger of losing a conventional war against the Russians? Illconsidered advances in technology have, as we have seen, perilously lowered the nuclear threshold. To some worried Americans, it looks as if the world could be wiped out keeping the Pentagon safe for General Dynamics.