Former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger warns that the U.S. military may be suffering from what he calls "victory disease."
"The conduct of Operation Desert Storm went very well," Caspar Weinberger affirms in an interview published in the March issue of The American Legion Magazine. "New high-tech weapons systems worked as they were designed to during the air phase of the war. Our troops performed like the professionals they are, and our ground forces drove Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in less than 100 hours, a major achievement no matter how you view it."
Did that stunning success sow the seeds for a future defeat? Weinberger thinks it may have. He worries that the U.S. victory "left a large number of Americans with the impression that our armed forces could beat anybody on the block in any situation" and warns that it would be shortsighted to conclude "that our military is okay the way it is."
Weinberger emphasizes that the U.S. "had a long period of time to prepare for the war in the Gulf. We don't have the air- and sea-lift capabilities to do that now," he laments. "We don't have the level of forces in Europe that we did in 1990 and 1991. We don't have the ongoing research and development in weapons systems needed to deal with a future threat."
Weinberger cites a number of "dismal trends" that he insists must be reversed. "The Pentagon is spending less on new weapons and equipment than at any time in the last 40 years," he observes. "Military personnel will be cut by a third by 1999. Our projected defense budgets will account for less than three percent of our Gross Domestic Product by 1999, less than at any time since 1940."
Of course, appropriating the necessary funds for defense and getting the President to actually spend them as authorized are two different things. "Congress passed the Missile Defense Act that requires the Chief Executive to proceed with a strategic defense," Weinberger points out, "but the President has refused to do that. Some members of Congress are seeking legal action to force the government to comply with the act." Weinberger considers it imperative for the U.S. to have a strategic defense. "Technically, it's doable now," he asserts, "but research needs to be ongoing. Most important, we need to get out from under the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty." That means renouncing the absurd and suicidal doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction.
The U.S. is no longer able "to prevail against military threats by spending our way through danger," Weinberger warns. "Ballistic missiles and other such weapons have changed that equation." In addition to restoring funding and augmenting troop strength, the former secretary of defense recommends that the U.S. "broaden and perfect our human intelligence capabilities so as to understand what's going on in the minds of leaders in countries who pose a threat to us. It's always better," he says, "to anticipate what might happen rather than to react."
