Part of the illusion of a “new world order” envisioned by President Bush depended on treaty negotiations to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Russian Federation (the core member of the Commonwealth of Independent States) as the heir of the U.S.S.R. The negotiators also sought a reduction of the NATO and Russian-Warsaw Pact forces in central Europe. The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (1992) sought levels of delivery vehicles and warheads from 30 to 60 percent lower than the 1980s levels. The ultimate goal was for the U.S. and Russia to maintain an ICBM force of around 500–600 and a submarine force armed with 1,750 missiles. The Russians agreed to cut their ICBM force in half and their SLBM force by a third. Such phased reductions would eventually cut Russian warhead numbers from 9,500 to 3,000–3,500, the same number of American warheads. Both sides agreed to closer control and better survivability in order to foreclose first strikes. The treaty arranged for American technicians to help dismantle and account for Russian missiles; the first on-site inspectors reported appalling security lapses and dangerous design flaws in Russian ICBMs. The treaty disarmed the new states of Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, which gave up ICBMs with 3,100 warheads and thus moved off the U.S. target list.
The United States also abrogated the ABM Treaty (1972) that limited antimissile missile development. The treaty had already been modified with imagination to justify “Star Wars” (a hypothetical missile defense system). In June 1992, the State Department announced that the U.S. would no longer deny itself ABM missiles and their acquisition and tracking systems. The projected ABM system would be deployed against rogue nuclear states. The Missile Defense Act of 1991 trumpeted a new mission, to provide “global protection against limited strikes.” The concern for ABM defense actually reflected the failure of the United States and its UN allies to curb nuclear proliferation, a concern heightened by fear of the leakage of Russian expertise and technology to the Muslim world. The advances in ABM technology made a modest system to counter a limited threat appear feasible and affordable.
The Soviet Union’s disintegration allowed the United States and its NATO allies to complete the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (1990), based on the correct assumption that the Warsaw Pact was no more. East German soldiers entered the Bundeswehr or faced the trauma of working. Six Eastern European nations cut their major weapons inventory from 20 to 50 percent. Seven spin-off U.S.S.R. republics made more modest cuts; Georgia radically increased its forces, an omen of civil wars to come. The core Russian republic (Moscow) lost 50,000 aircraft, artillery pieces, and mechanized vehicles to the separatist republics but retained 5,150 aircraft, 13,000 tanks, 13,175 artillery pieces, and 20,000 armored combat vehicles, more than adequate to fight its rebels and neighbors but not a streamlined NATO, which had reduced its inventory of 81,000 major systems to 76,000, not exactly unilateral disarmament.
The faith that the Cold War had ended in victory encouraged the assumption that the nation’s security problems had faded to minor nuisances. President Bush even sent veterans a fancy letter that thanked them for their Cold War service, a nice touch in a reelection campaign. The best concept cautionary planners could argue was that the armed forces should retain the capability to fight another Gulf War with enough force structure for peacekeeping missions and minor counterinsurgency expeditions. General Colin Powell, JCS chairman, and Congressman Les Aspin, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, argued for a base force of 1.6 million but accepted an active duty force of 1.4 million, or 600,000 fewer active duty personnel than the troop strength at the climax of the Gulf War. The Pentagon created programs to force senior officers and NCOs to retire, reduce the million-person civilian defense force by one-third, and inflict job losses of 300,000–400,000 on the defense industry. Congress even relinquished the power (rich in patronage) over military installations to a Base Reduction and Alignment Commission (1988), a sure sign of reduced interest in defense spending.
The services, faced with strength cuts, planned to be smaller, but to be more mobile and armed with precision-guided weapons employed by highly skilled long-term professionals. For example, the average age of military personnel inched up from twenty-six toward thirty, with accompanying changes in rank structure and benefits for scarce technicians and expert field operators. Instead of a future 600-ship Navy, the 1980s plan, the Navy sought 200–230 surface craft and 120 submarines by 2000. The Air Force closed down Strategic Air Command and assigned nuclear capable units to a joint service Strategic Command (1992) that also controlled the Navy’s ballistic missile submarines, reduced to fourteen, with four others converted to launch cruise missiles. The Army would stand down four divisions (sixteen to twelve) and eliminate one corps from its Germany-based NATO force. The Marine Corps by law would field three divisions and three aircraft wings but would reduce each by the equivalent of three infantry regiments (around 10,000) and supporting forces and stabilize at around 175,000 or almost 40,000 below wartime manning levels. All the services hoped that better training, less personnel turnover, and new weapons would offset numbers. One sign of the times was that the joint Transportation Command, a budgeting stepchild, received more money to buy large transport aircraft (the C-5 and C-17) and build squadrons of preloaded and predeployed logistical ships for all the services, not just the Marine Corps.
International statesmen—and not just allies—watched the United States reduce its forces with concern. The secretary-general of the UN, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, looked into the future in his Agenda for Peace (1992) and predicted the rise of rogue and failed states that would require UN action, especially if nuclear proliferation increased. The United States was the only UN member with a full-service global military capability. His successor, Kofi Annan, preached preemptive military intervention to resolve the growing number of civil wars, insurgencies, and communal conflicts, like the Tamil-Sinhalese war in Sri Lanka or the drug cartel wars that had ravaged Colombia. The thrust of these arguments raised strategic questions about post–Cold War use of force. What of genocide in the Sudan? Piracy off the Horn of Africa? What could be done about the civil war in Yugoslavia? What of the alliance of Persian fanatics and Arab terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, firmly rooted in Lebanon and Syria? And what was one to make of an expatriate Saudi millionaire engineer who in 1989 declared war on the United States as part of a jihad against Israel? Who was Osama bin Laden?
The Clinton Administration: Avoiding War and Inviting Future Conflict, 1993–2001
The disintegration of the Soviet Union set off a surge of strategic reassessment in Washington as the new Clinton administration and Congress faced a world without a plausible enemy. For planners who needed an enemy to shape contingency planning, the People’s Republic of China became the villain-of-choice. Although it had modernized its armed forces and developed its strategic nuclear force (about 200 missiles, aimed presumably at Russia, Taiwan, and Japan), China never became a convincing threat because of U.S.-PRC economic interdependence. In truth, regional threats like Iran and North Korea fit the strategy of nuclear deterrence and forward, collective defense. This strategy, however, presented many options. Clinton endorsed a DOD report, “A National Security Strategy of Enlargement and Engagement,” in 1996, followed by “A National Security for a New Century” in 1997. Both paid lip service to military leverage in diplomacy with a stress on economic well-being and promoting democracy abroad. In the mandated Quadrennial Defense Review (1997), the strategic gurus in DOD began to stress “post-modern warfare” and “asymmetric warfare,” which encouraged more uncertainty, an invitation to solving strategic dilemmas by reorganization. A study by a congressional panel, the Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces (1995–1996), argued that theater and functional field commanders needed more power and resources, allocated directly by Congress or by a stronger JCS. The commission, loaded with experts, identified the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation, information warfare, peace operations, and “operations other than war” as
the missions of the future.
The Pentagon struggled to bring more definition to strategic thinking in the post–Cold War era. The JCS offered its analysis in “Joint Vision 2010” (1995) and “Joint Vision 2020” (2000). The JCS conceded that nonstate threats required more attention and that rogue state interest in WMD justified serious concern. The Chiefs urged more investment in missile defense and space-based information acquisition systems accompanied by modest force integration. Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen (1997–2001) admitted in his annual report of 1999 that a capabilities-based strategy appealed to him but could cost an additional $112 billion over the next six years. Readiness training and technological exploitation could make the budget unacceptable in Congress, which he knew well as a former U.S. Senator. Congress again tackled the “how much and for what” question with a blue-ribbon U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century. The commission’s reports (1999–2001) identified the force priorities: nuclear offensive and defensive forces for deterrence, better homeland defense against all WMD, conventional forces for major regional wars, and more rapidly deployable expeditionary forces for humanitarian and peacekeeping missions. The basic thrust, however, was that the U.S. should avoid diplomatic commitments that increased the chances of war. Within an administration focused on domestic reform, there were few experts in international security affairs since twelve years of Republican executive branch domination had blocked a new generation of Democratic realpolitik foreign policy activists.
Of all the policy issues for which Bill Clinton could claim real expertise, national defense was not one of them. A child of the rebellious 1960s and a passionate liberal-intellectual who viewed defense spending as a barrier to domestic reform, Clinton surrounded himself with staffers unmoved by the Pentagon’s concerns. Clinton’s agenda focused on economic growth and underclass empowerment. As a student at Georgetown University, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, and a law student at Yale, Clinton fancied the life of classrooms and coffeehouses and shrank from the prospect of military service in the 1960s. To avoid conscription, he joined Army ROTC at Arkansas where he planned to attend law school, gambling that the Vietnam War would end before he was commissioned. Winning this wager with fate, Clinton sought extended educational deferments until the Army did not want him. Since many other college students of his generation had dodged Vietnam service, Clinton’s suspended patriotism did not bar him from Arkansas politics. In 1992 he astounded the experts by upsetting an incumbent president who had just won a war. The election issues, however, were domestic and stressed Republican disdain for economic growth, urban renewal, and social reform.
Like Jack Kennedy, with whom he shared some common instincts, Bill Clinton’s first-year performance as commander in chief impressed no one except his liberal, antimilitary White House staffers. He appointed relative unknowns, Anthony Lake and Samuel “Sandy” Berger, as national security advisers. Moreover, Clinton faced Colin Powell, the charismatic-celebrity JCS chairman, and a Congress full of defense experts like Senators Sam Nunn, John Warner, and William S. Cohen and Congressmen Sonny Montgomery, Ike Skelton, Leon Panetta, and Les Aspin. Clinton thought he could improve his toxic relationship with his admirals and generals by appointing Aspin as secretary of defense. A policy “wonk” like the president and equally talkative, Aspin lasted less than a year. In December 1993, Dr. William J. Perry, an engineer-manager and protégé of the revered Harold Brown, moved up from deputy secretary to replace Aspin. During Clinton’s second term, Perry, suffering from crisis burnout, left office voluntarily. Clinton replaced him with Senator Cohen. In the meantime, Powell retired and became a Republican. No other chairman or service chief ever approached his influence. Clinton’s military detractors came from the Republican Party and from the unified and specified field commanders (the CINCs), especially General Wesley K. Clark, U.S. Army and SACEUR. A master of the quick study, Clinton learned the issues and made himself more sympathetic to the JCS, and he let Perry and Cohen manage the armed forces. In any event, Clinton also felt more comfortable as diplomat in chief, served by a State Department staffed with veterans of the Carter administration, many of them disciples of the noninterventionist former secretary, Cyrus Vance.
Once in office, Secretaries Aspin and Perry favored a capabilities-based strategy that could meet varied contingencies, but they tightened the definition to mean fighting two regional wars simultaneously, presumably with Iraq or Iran in the Middle East or North Korea. Few military planners regarded this view as realistic. The administration, in fact, continued to reduce the size of the armed forces until they reached 1.36 million in 2000. The defense budget declined to $267.2 billion but reversed course to $318 billion as the economy improved and the federal budget actually showed a surplus. Nuclear force modernization, spending on quality personnel, and investment in electronic improvements of weapons systems took priority over maintaining more people and units. “Star Wars” came to earth with the widespread development of night-vision devices, reconnaissance and armed pilotless aircraft, air and artillery ordnance with radar and terminal guidance, satellite communications and ground positioning systems (GPS), and advanced armor for people and vehicles. By 2000 the American infantryman had begun to look like his futuristic comrades in the movie Starship Troopers. Vietnam War GIs looked as anachronistic as their grandfathers in the movie Saving Private Ryan. All the “gee whiz” technology did not translate into strategic aggressiveness. International approval and the fear of public reaction to service deaths had a determinative influence on American interventionism or intervention avoidance.
The Issue of Intervention
In seven cases, Clinton shied from using decisive military force to shape commitments he inherited or initiated. In geographic terms, these examples of the Clinton way-of-nonwar occurred in Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, Kosovo, Iraq, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. The bounded use of military force seemed like a good idea at the time—at least in public acceptance—but the unhappy consequences in two cases (Iraq and Afghanistan) left much more to be resolved later at greater cost. The Clinton administration certainly avoided military deaths. During Clinton’s eight years as commander in chief, the U.S. armed forces lost only eighty men and women killed by enemy action; thirty-seven of them died in two terrorist attacks on military support bases in “friendly” countries, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. At least the armed forces could report that they had cut accidental training deaths in half and murder-suicides by a third from the averages of the 1980s. Such numbers also suggested a reduction in stressful training and reduced deployments as well as more supervision and counseling. The mission of the day was force protection.
The interventions in Somalia and Haiti demonstrated the limitations of humanitarian action. While it would be comforting to believe that the Clinton administration wanted to save lives regardless of race, creed, and nationality, avoiding American deaths had the highest priority. Clinton inherited George Bush’s commitment of December 1992 to Operation RESTORE HOPE, a UN humanitarian relief effort to feed Somalis displaced by wars with the Ethiopians, Eritreans, and other Somalis as well as a drought. Fifteen Somali clans and factional armies vied with each other to steal UN relief supplies of food and medicine and to intimidate the thousands of unarmed relief workers. As the last vestiges of government disappeared throughout Somalia in November 1991, the United Nations arbitrators left the capital of Mogadishu and tried to organize a humanitarian relief effort that had military protection and could function throughout all of Somalia. Since the United States was already part of the relief effort run by air from Kenya, the Bush administration agreed to lead Operation RESTORE HOPE, authorized by the UN Security Council in December 1992. Somalia would be regarded as a failed state without a legitimate government, so the UN would provide political guidance through Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who accepted Lieutenant General Robert B. Johnson, USMC, as commander of the United Task Force Somalia (UNITAF) organized under the United Nations Somalia Mission (UNOSOM). Answeri
ng the UN call for troops, twenty-three nations sent military units to Somalia (seventeen sent ground combat units) for UNOSOM I (December 1992–May 1993) or UNOSOM II (May 1993–March 1994). At peak strength UNITAF numbered 38,000, about one-third American, with thousands more troops afloat or in Middle East support bases and operated under American command. An estimated 50,000 Americans eventually served in Somalia.
Given its bias toward international humanitarianism, Clinton’s State Department embraced Operation RESTORE HOPE, even though the Pentagon had reservations about the mission and troop levels. President Bush had announced that the United States might send as many as 28,000 troops to make Security Council Resolution 794 work and “to establish a secure environment for humanitarian relief operations in Somalia as soon as possible.” The intervention should not favor any Somali political faction. In fact, the Somali warlords had no stomach to fight the Marine air-ground amphibious brigade that led 23,000 peacekeepers into Somalia in December 1992. The heart of the long-term stabilizing UNITAF would be Special Forces, a U.S. Army brigade, and a UNITAF service support command, totaling only 5,500 officers and men. The 10th Mountain Division brigade would provide the UNITAF with a quick reaction force should the Somalis attack UNOSOM. Although not free of sporadic fighting, the occupation of Somalia went smoothly enough because the two most powerful clan coalitions, the Hawiye/Habar Gidr of Mohamed Farrah Aideed and the Hawiye/Abgal of Ali Mahdi Mohamed, wanted to see how and when to turn UNITAF’s presence to their rival purposes.
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