June 4, 2001

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS

FROM: GARY SCHMITT

SUBJECT: Defense

On Friday, the administration requested a $5.64 billion defense supplemental for fiscal 2001. According to Undersecretary of Defense Dov Zackheim, the proposed supplemental "simply deals with urgent requirements." "It's not," he said, "meant to be a path breaker." To say it's not a "path breaker" is to state the obvious; to say it "deals with urgent requirements" is misleading. A supplemental of this size does not even begin to cover the gap between what the services need and what they have in resources. Every reputable study done over the past two years has noted that the defense budget was tens of billions short, and that the readiness, training, and operations and maintenance -- let alone the modernization -- of the standing force have all suffered as a result.

And, as the New York Times reported yesterday on its front page ("Military Agenda Appears at Risk," by James Dao and Thom Shanker), after the recent tax cut, the surplus available to the federal government to increase discretionary spending may well disappear starting in 2003, "leaving no money to expand Pentagon spending without cutting social programs, slashing military forces or dipping into the Medicare or Social Security surpluses." Without a change in course, the Bush Administration will be unable to fix the gap between defense programs and resources, revolutionize the armed forces, and build missile defenses without severely cutting back on the size of the American military and sharply reducing its global presence.

As Tom Donnelly (attached) points out in this week's Weekly Standard ("Cheap Hawks," June 11), this situation could have been -- and still can be -- avoided. But to fix it now will require an administration far more aware of the dangerous strategic consequences that follow from a failure to increase defense spending significantly. It will require an administration willing to rethink its budget priorities. This will be a difficult road, but it's the only one which will allow the Bush Administration to fulfill its campaign promise of a stronger defense on behalf of a "distinctly American internationalism.