Defense: Pulling Back

A GEORGE MCGOVERN presidency would shake the Pentagon to its subterranean fallout shelters. He has proposed a $32 billion slash in the defense budget within three years and spelled out precisely how he would achieve it (see chart, next page). As he defended that position before a Joint Economic Committee hearing on Capitol Hill last week, it was apparent that arms is the area in which McGovern has been most specific and will not waffle. To support his point that national security is threatened less from abroad than by "the deterioration of our society from within," McGovern quoted President Eisenhower, who warned in 1953: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

If McGovern had his way, more generals than rockets might be fired. As one possibility for saving military money, he noted that the Armed Forces are now "ridiculously top-heavy," pointing out that the U.S. has fewer troops than in 1964, but more officers above the rank of lieutenant colonel. A bit belligerently, the former World War II bomber pilot declared: "I'm not overawed by generals like some politicians who've never been in service." Yet he insists that his alternative national defense posture provides for basic U.S. security and that he would not shrink from using military force if necessary. "I'm not a pacifist," he says. "If we confront another Hitler or a clear threat to our national interests, I'd respond with power. It's a dangerous world, and some people only understand force."

Whether the McGovern budget actually provides for the kinds and degrees of force that might be found necessary is debatable. He insists that there is faulty logic in comparing one year's budget with another and considering any reduction an automatic decline in strength. "If we spend $20 billion on new weapons in one year and $5 billion the next," he notes, "we have not cut our military force. We have increased it by $5 billion." Pentagon and independent analysts contend that McGovern has underestimated the costs of the forces in his recommended budget by at least $10 billion--which is meant to show McGovern's faulty arithmetic, but could also mean that his cut is actually less drastic than it looks.

McGovern's savings in strategic nuclear weapons would come mainly from phasing out the less versatile liquid-fueled Titan ICBM and reducing the strategic bombing force--on the grounds that the U.S.S.R. is cutting back its bombers and the U.S. needs only enough of them to complicate Soviet defensive planning.

McGovern becomes impatient with the complex theories of what might be needed to fight a nuclear war, arguing that there are no effective defenses and that once such a war starts, the choice between "calamity and catastrophe" is meaningless. The point is to deter a nuclear exchange, and McGovern insists that beyond a minimum, the number of missiles that opposing sides have is irrelevant. The U.S. has far more warheads than the 200 he figures are necessary to destroy the limited targets that would have to be attacked to render either China or Russia helpless.

McGovern thus sees no need to continue the program of placing more warheads within single missiles, for example in converting the Polaris submarines into the MIRVed Poseidon system or in MIRVing the Minuteman ICBMs. The fact that the U.S. has been doing this, he argues, only ensures that the Russians will not stop until they deploy MIRVed missiles too. He assails the Nixon Administration's practice of developing such systems partly as a bargaining chip to gain SALT agreements. This is "a grave and costly tactical blunder: our ability to build these systems should be just as effective for bargaining purposes as actual construction."

The candidate argues that the U.S. nuclear-submarine fleet alone is all that is really essential to deter an enemy from attacking, since there is no way to simultaneously locate, much less destroy, enough of these vessels. He sees the future of land ICBMS and bombers as limited, but considers their added deterrent value worth maintaining at their relatively low cost. He would modernize existing B-52 bombers rather than develop the new B-l bomber. He applauds the SALT limitations on anti-ballistic-missile systems on the grounds that they are essentially ineffective.

While some independent strategic-weapons specialists describe McGovern's reasoning as "simple-minded," and his faith in the invulnerability of the submarine as too extreme, few quarrel violently with his nuclear policies.

Some, however, do worry about a possible Soviet catch-up in nuclear technology--although they do not claim that this would necessarily increase the danger of nuclear war. Far more controversial are McGovern's proposals for a unilateral 56% reduction in U.S. forces assigned to NATO defenses in Europe and his proposal to slash the number of U.S. aircraft carriers from 16 to six.

McGovern justifies the U.S. troop withdrawal from Europe largely on his analysis that NATO and the opposing Warsaw Pact forces are roughly in balance, that defensive forces always require far fewer troops than does an attacking force and that the remaining sizable U.S. contingent would be enough to assure NATO allies that they would not be abandoned in the event of a Soviet attack. McGovern probably places too much reliance on the ability of the U.S. to airlift troops swiftly into Europe to reinforce the defense in such a case. Some U.S. pullback by the Nixon Administration seems likely as talks on mutual reductions with the Soviet Union are planned--and McGovern could be faulted for removing any Soviet incentive to bargain.

The McGovern assault on carriers is based on the claim that the flattops are simply too vulnerable in any war with an enemy that has sophisticated tactical missiles. He concedes the usefulness of the carrier in emergencies "to show the flag" and in a Viet Nam-style war in which they do not come under serious attack. But he considers them too costly for these limited functions--and notes that neither the Soviet Union nor China has any attack carriers at all so far. The carriers' defenders, of course, regard them as an invaluable means of extending U.S. power throughout the world in any limited war situation. They see great dangers in McGovern's plan to have only two carriers stationed out of the European theater.

White Flag. While McGovern's defense posture can be defended as falling far short of "running up the white flag," as Defense Secretary Melvin Laird has charged, its most serious deficiency may be its failure to link the level of military power with a clear statement of how McGovern views U.S. commitments abroad. McGovern has not yet drawn more than a rough outline of his foreign policy. He does, however, accept the notion that the U.S. can almost dismiss Asia as an area in which U.S. interests will require a military presence. His celebrated vow to withdraw U.S. forces from Viet Nam and the rest of Indochina would further reduce U.S. military commitments. He would also withdraw the U.S. from SEATO, dismissing the treaty as "one of those Dulles pacts that has never meant anything." He seems unworried by complaints that withdrawal from Asia might exacerbate hostility between China and Japan and give Japan an incentive to develop nuclear weapons.

McGovern has been attacked for his readiness to abandon the Saigon government as being inconsistent with his determination that, as President, he would "not let Israel go under." McGovern sees Israel as "a democratic nation, whose elected leadership has as firm a support among its people as any government in the world," in contrast with Saigon's government, which he has termed "a corrupt dictatorship which long ago lost the support of its people."

He has condemned U.S. support of the Greek military government and charged that for too long U.S. policy has been "obsessed with the fear of international Communism," when in fact, "some of the worst scoundrels round the world sail under an anti-Communist banner." He adds: "I don't like Communism, but I don't think we have any great obligation to save the world from it. That's a choice other countries have to make." Going beyond the Nixon Doctrine, McGovern says that he would prefer that nations like Brazil or India not turn Communist, but that if they did, it would not "fundamentally affect our interests." McGovern thus applauds Nixon's overtures to Peking and Moscow. He would pull all U.S. forces out of Taiwan, abandoning that government. He also argues that South Korea is so much stronger than its foes in the North that U.S. troops can also be withdrawn from there. In fact, there are those who worry that without a U.S. presence, South Korea might attack North Korea.

Clearly, McGovern's interest in domestic affairs transcends his concern for world events, partly because he feels that U.S. influence will depend upon the quality of its society. He is at a huge disadvantage with Nixon in expertise and experience in global affairs, but he is moving to attract expert advice. He recently created a foreign policy task force under Abram Chayes, a Harvard Law School professor and former State Department legal adviser in the Kennedy Administration.

McGovern is undoubtedly right in arguing that America's safety does not depend upon sheer nuclear numbers, as the recent U.S.-Soviet agreements bear witness. And there is always a mood in the country to cut back on arms in the wake of a war. But the net effect of McGovern in the White House would likely be that the U.S. would be living more dangerously. No one can be sure, for example, that the nuclear arms race can be slowed more by the example of unilateral U.S. reductions than by bargaining based on threats of escalation. In its conventional-force deployment and in its diplomacy as well, the U.S. would probably pull back, worry less about competing with the Soviet Union for influence everywhere and be less ready to intervene if a nation slipped toward Communism. Those are drastic shifts in the postwar role of the U.S. in the world, and they raise momentous questions for the U.S. and its allies.

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