"When Two Tribes Go To War..." Whatever happened to Grammy Award winners, "Frankie Goes to Hollywood." ??? Michael Pugliese
August 18, 2001 Talk about it E-mail story Print
Rumsfeld Blasts 2-War Strategy
Military: Defense chief says U.S. is 'living a lie' under idea of battling on twin fronts. He envisions smaller, nimble forces.
Times Headlines (Bush's Faith-Based Project Chief Quits After 6 Months (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-000066909aug18.story?coll =la%2Dheadlines%2Dnation Bye, bye John J. DiIulio Jr. you can only call conservative Protestants insensitive back in academia now...)
By ESTHER SCHRADER, TIMES STAFF WRITER
WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday that he is seeking to shape a smaller, more nimble military that's capable of winning a major war "decisively" while still fighting smaller conflicts around the world.
Speaking to reporters just six weeks before a comprehensive reassessment of the armed forces is to be sent to Congress, Rumsfeld said the U.S. military has been "living a lie" under its decade-old operating strategy of being prepared to fight two major wars at once.
He said that strategy had stretched the military thin and prevented needed investments in equipment and strategy that would help wage the wars of the future. "It has brought us where we are," Rumsfeld said. "It has brought us to a point where we don't have the forces to do it. It has brought us to a point where, because of the efforts to do it, we have slighted modernization and took a prolonged procurement holiday; we have slighted, in my view, transformation; and we have slighted things that affect the quality of our force."
In his most detailed public ruminations in months concerning his mammoth effort to "transform" the military, Rumsfeld sketched what he termed a less ambitious role for the armed forces and also sought to allay worries that the review would call for significant cutbacks in troops, programs and equipment.
His comments came amid speculation that he intends to cut the number of troops in Europe and congressional backlash against his plan to reduce the size of the B-1 bomber fleet.
As hints of Rumsfeld's plan have emerged in recent weeks, critics have questioned the claims of senior military officials that the proposed shift in strategy would provide significant savings.
Top-level Pentagon officials are finishing the reassessment, which is designed to lay the foundation of a top-to-bottom reshaping of naval, air and land forces. The contents of the report, due to Congress by Sept. 30, have been the source of intense speculation inside the military and in Congress.
But the chances of such a reshaping happening soon appear increasingly unlikely as a slowing economy, declining budget surplus and the $1.35-trillion tax cut passed by Congress in May eat into the Pentagon's hopes for a bigger budget.
In his comments, Rumsfeld did not detail the much-awaited nuts and bolts of the plan: how many troops the Pentagon would work with, where they would operate and what weapons they would have. Indeed, he hinted that he may leave many of those details to be hashed out later by the individual service branches.
Instead, Rumsfeld focused on what he billed as a new strategy for using the armed forces that would be affordable yet still capable of unleashing lethal force against aggressors.
The requirement that the armed forces should be able to fight and win two major wars simultaneously dates to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when the Pentagon began preparing to win a potential second conflict with North Korea while fighting Iraqi forces. It had been used to justify the need to keep 1.4 million troops on active duty. But Rumsfeld said Friday that the military did not have then and does not have now the forces or funding to make the strategy workable.
"What we currently lack is the ability to meet the requirements of the two major regional conflicts," Rumsfeld said. "We simply don't have those forces or those capabilities."
Rumsfeld suggested instead a military capable of winning a war against one major foe at a time while "repelling" another foe using methods short of all-out war. He said that meant being able to win a second simultaneous conflict without "going all the way to the capital" of an enemy country.
In addition, Rumsfeld said he wants the armed forces to be capable of stepping in to wage smaller "contingencies" around the world, such as U.S. operations in Somalia and Haiti, as well as peacekeeping duties.
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