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The events of September 11 should have beena wake-up call for transforming U.S. defenseplanning. Unfortunately and paradoxically,despite the Bush administration’s continuationof rhetoric about defense “transformation,”those events likely drove the last nail into the cof-fin of reform.During his campaign and early in his adminis-tration, President Bush pledged to create a trans-formed military, based less on size and more onswiftness, agility, and ease of deployment. To dothat, he talked about modernizing existingweapons selectively, skipping a generation of tech-nology, and investing the savings in cutting-edgetechnologies that would provide a quantum leapin future military capabilities. Such transforma-tion implied cutting force structure, terminatingsome weapons currently in development, andinvesting the savings in technologies for the future.Even before September 11, however, defensereform died at the hand of vested interests in themilitary bureaucracy and defense industry andtheir supporters in Congress. After September 11and the war in Afghanistan, President Bush hadthe opportunity to use his prestige and highpublic approval ratings, as well as renewed pub-lic interest in national security issues, to resusci-tate his defense reform agenda. Instead, the pres-ident took the easy way out, asking for the largestincrease in defense spending since the militarybuildup during the Reagan administration.Until recently, all talk of terminating unneededor Cold War–era weapons or cutting or reform-ing force structure had ceased.Merely throwing money at a bureaucracywhose efficiency even Secretary Rumsfeld com-pares to Soviet central planning effectively killsany chance of transforming the way thePentagon will fight future wars. Many trouble-some, unneeded, and Cold War–era weaponsmust be terminated; the balance of fundinggiven to each of the military services must bealtered; the forces of each service must betrimmed and restructured; and savings fromsuch reforms must be reallocated to fundneglected areas and futuristic technologies.Those promises were included in Bush’s agendafor defense transformation and became evenmore vital after September 11, but they will prob-ably be left unfulfilled.
 Empty Promises
Why the Bush Administration’s Half-Hearted  Attempts at Defense Reform Have Failed 
by David Isenberg and Ivan Eland
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
 David Isenberg is a senior analyst at Intellibridge and editor of its
Homeland Security Monitor.
 He is also anadjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. Ivan Eland is director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute.
Executive Summary
No. 442June 11, 2002
 
Introduction
Usually only a crisis can jar Washington—acity normally strangled by interests vested inthe status quo—into efforts at reform. Eventhen, reforms may be snuffed out if the vestedinterests can turn the crisis to their advantage.That appears to be what happened withdefense reform after September 11.The terrorist attacks of September 11 werea cataclysmic wake-up call to implement thereforms of the American military thatPresident Bush had promised during his cam-paign and early in his presidency. Even beforeSeptember 11, candidate and then presidentBush realized that the Cold War–oriented U.S.military had to be transformed to meet newthreats. Those threats were then somewhatmurky. In the wake of September 11, they areno longer so hazy. Between his inaugurationin January 2001 and the September 11 attacks,Bush’s defense transformation died a quietdeath. The “iron triangle” of Congress, thedefense industry, and the Pentagon bureau-cracy effectively killed the initiative. And theprospects for transformation are no betterafter September 11. The Quadrennial DefenseReview and the 2003 defense budget—bothissued after the attacks—were decidedly “non-transformational.”President Bush, with immense prestige andpopularity in the wake of the attacks and thesubsequent war in Afghanistan, could havechanneled renewed public interest in nationalsecurity to revive transformation and attemptto enact it over the objections of the vestedinterests. Instead, the Bush administrationchose to ask for the largest hike in the defensebudget since the Reagan buildup during theCold War—a whopping $48 billion increase.And in the wake of the terrorist attacks andthe current war on terrorism, the overwhelm-ing sentiment in Washington is to give theadministration whatever it wants. The admin-istration’s reflexive increase in the defensebudget made the vested interests happy, but itwill not enhance U.S. security. Indeed, it willdo quite the opposite. Pouring money into thePentagon will bury any incentives for a sloth-ful bureaucracy to transform the U.S. militaryto fight the potent enemy at the gates—cata-strophic terrorism.Recently, Secretary of Defense DonaldRumsfeld has again floated the idea that exist-ing weapons programs—for example, theCrusader mobile artillery piece—could be cutto finance new “transformational technolo-gies.” The key test of Rumsfeld’s true inten-tions will be whether another hefty fundinghike is included in the administration’s 2004defense budget request or whether the admin-istration begins altering its funding priorities.But if recent history is any guide, even a sincereplan by the administration for defense reformmay be beaten back by vested interests.
Why the U.S. Military NeedsTransformation
After the Cold War the U.S. military wasmerely shrunk into a “Cold War Lite” force. Along-standing gentlemen’s agreement amongthe armed services—designed to reduce inter-service competition for funds within theDepartment of Defense (DoD) and thus pre-serve each service’s budget—led to relativelyequal reductions of the three main branches.The Army was reduced by 44 percent (from 18active divisions to 10), the Navy by 44 percent(from 566 battle force ships to 317), and theAir Force by 50 percent (from 25 active fighterwings to 12.5).
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Even the “Cold War Lite” forcewas excessive and maladapted for the muchlower and different threat environment in thewake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, arival superpower with a goal of world domina-tion. Yet after the demise of the Eastern Bloc,specific future threats were unclear.According to a Congressional BudgetOffice report in 2000:The U.S. military today has nopeer. In number, certain Russian andChinese conventional (mostly non-nuclear) weapons and forces mayequal and, in and in a few cases,
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Between hisinauguration inJanuary 2001 andthe September 11attacks, Bush’sdefense transfor-mation died aquiet death.
 
exceed those of the United States. Butthe capabilities of the U.S. military farsurpass those of other nations oncesuch factors as training, readiness forcombat, sophistication of weapons,and availability of linked communica-tions and intelligence networks aretaken into account.
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The Threat from “Rogue” States
The threat from the small, poor “rogue”states (especially Iran, Iraq, and North Korea),which the military establishment during theClinton and second Bush administrationsembraced to slow and eventually reversedeclines in military spending, seemed to bedeclining rather than increasing during thatperiod. The U.S. national security communityplanned to fight two medium-sized wars dur-ing overlapping time periods—the most likelyscenarios were thought to be in Korea and thePersian Gulf. But, according to a 1997 DoDreport, “the prospect[s] of near-simultaneousconflicts in both theater[s] are declining.” Theassessment also concluded that “in bothcases, the threat is diminishing. It is even pos-sible that the Korean threat will collapse.”
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As for the threat to the Persian Gulf,Anthony Cordesman, a noted authority onmilitaries in the Middle East, wrote, “Iran can-not win a naval-air battle against U.S. forces inthe Gulf, and it has no prospect of doing so inthe foreseeable future. It would have to rebuildand modernize both its regular navy and airforce at levels of strength and capability it sim-ply cannot hope to achieve in the nextdecade.”
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He continued, “Iran has major near-term vulnerabilities in all scenarios, and Iran’sleaders seem to recognize this. It should bepossible to use the limits of Iranian militarycapabilities to ride out the present hostility of Iran’s leaders and reach a stable modus viven-di without a major regional war.”
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In another book on Iraq’s military capabil-ities, Cordsman wrote, “Iraq has almost noneof the assets necessary to win a naval-air battleagainst US forces in the Gulf, and it has noprospect of acquiring these assets in the fore-seeable future. It would have to rebuild, mod-ernize, and massively expand both its regularnavy and air force at levels of strength andcapability it simply cannot hope to achieve forthe next half decade.”
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Weakened financiallyby more than a decade of international eco-nomic sanctions, Iraq would be unlikely toobtain the capabilities to challenge the bone-crushing dominance of the U.S. military in thePersian Gulf—especially when the U.S. defensebudget increases dwarf the entire defense bud-get of Iraq.
The Threat of Catastrophic Terrorism
Even before the September 11 attacks,some analysts were warning of the increasedthreat of catastrophic terrorism. The Com-mission on National Security/21st Century(better known as the Hart-RudmannCommission after its chairmen, former sena-tors Gary Hart and Warren Rudmann) wastasked by Congress to undertake a sweepingreview of national security strategy. Its firstreport, released in September 1999, sought todescribe the world emerging in the first quar-ter of the 21st century. Prophetically, the com-mission predicted:There will also be a greater prob-ability of a far more insidious kind of violence in the next millennium; cat-astrophic terrorism . . . .Future terrorists will probably beeven less hierarchically organizedand yet better networked, than theyare today. Their diffuse nature willmake them more anonymous, yettheir ability to coordinate masseffects on a global basis will increase.Teamed with states in a regional con-tingency, they could become the“ultimate fifth column.” Terrorismwill appeal to many weak states as anattractive asymmetric option toblunt the influence of major powers.Hence, state-sponsored terroristattacks are at least as likely, if notmore so, than attacks by indepen-dent, unaffiliated terrorist groups.
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The administra-tion’s reflexiveincrease in thedefense budgetmade the vestedinterests happy,but it will notenhance U.S.security.
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