Powell's 1.6 Million-Strong Military Was Supposed to Be the Floor Below Which the US Dared Not

Powell’s 1.6 million-strong military was supposed to be the floor below which the US dared not go. By Lorna S. Jaffe Editor’s note: INCE the late 1940s, the US had based National Ten years ago this month, DoD officially began Military Strategy on the necessity of deterring and, if deterrence failed, successfully fighting a transforming its Cold War force into the Base global war against the Soviet Union. In 1987, Joint Force. A military that long had been preoccu- Staff strategists began to examine some of the pied with global war started shedding 500,000 Splanning assumptions supporting this strategy. Their troops and focusing on regional conflicts. review led them to conclude that National Military Strat- egy should put greater emphasis on regional planning. This step—pushed hard by Gen. Colin Powell, While strategists were developing new approaches based Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—came initially on assessments of US capabilities (but increas- only after a major Pentagon struggle, one ingly on their assessment of the reduced threat from the ably chronicled in “The Development of the Warsaw Pact), Joint Staff force planners in 1988 began Base Force: 1989–1992” by Lorna S. Jaffe of to analyze the force structure that supported current the JCS Joint History Office. strategy. The prospect of an accelerated decline in defense funding, together with the sweeping changes tak- As Jaffe’s 1993 study showed, the changeover ing place within the Warsaw Pact, prompted them to was painful and hard-fought. The four service recommend significant force reductions. chiefs opposed the cuts. President Bush’s When Gen. Colin L. Powell became Chairman of the Defense Secretary, Dick Cheney, did not Joint Chiefs of Staff in October 1989, he brought to the approve the plan until convinced he could position his own views on the likely shape of the world in the 1990s and a determination to restructure the US reverse the drawdown. Powell himself saw armed forces to meet this new environment. He not only the Base Force as the minimum required for gave direction to the efforts already under way on the superpower responsibilities. Joint Staff but pushed them further, shaping them to conform to his strategic vision. The result was a new After taking office in January 1993, the newly National Military Strategy and a new conceptualization elected President, Bill Clinton, launched his of force structure to support this strategy. This strategy own defense review. The outcome was the and its supporting configuration of forces marked a elimination of 300,000 more troops, six more major departure from the US approach to the world Air Force wings, two more Army divisions, during the preceding 40-plus years. Their development and 150 more Navy warships. It marked the influenced as well the development of a new national end of the Base Force. defense strategy and a new national security strategy.... What follows are excerpts of the Jaffe study. Scenarios for Regional War The full version can be obtained from the Government Printing Office. Through [the latter 1980s], Joint Staff strategists continued to press for greater emphasis on regional planning. ... The work done by J-5 in designing scenarios for regional war reinforced Joint Staff strategists’ conclu- sion that the major focus of strategy must shift to regional planning and led to the realization that this shift would require force restructuring. ... [An important fig- ure in the Base Force story, USAF Maj. Gen. George Lee Butler, in May 1987 became vice director of J-5, strategic plans and policy.] By the time he became director of J-5 in August 1989, [Lt. Gen.] Butler had developed his own strategic overview. ... On the basis of his assessment 56 AIR FORCE Magazine / December 2000 Quiet Study I assumed no change in strategy, but Quiet Study II postulated a shift to regional contingencies. of developments in the Soviet Union, Butler concluded consumed the largest portion of the defense budget. that the Cold War was over, Communism had failed, and From autumn 1988 discussions that they had initiated the world was witnessing a second Russian Revolution. with Congressional staff members and Office of Man- He examined the implications for US strategy of the agement and Budget personnel, PBAD action officers success of the policy of containment. In his view, the had concluded that DoD could expect an accelerated world was entering a multipolar era, in which superpow- decline in the growth of its budget amounting to an ers would find it increasingly difficult to influence events approximately 25 percent real decline over the next five militarily. In addition to the decline of the Soviet Union years. This ran counter to OSD projections that the and the further evolution of West European alliance decline would continue at its current rate, resulting in- relationships, the coming era would see the rise of new stead in an approximately 10 percent decline over the hegemonic powers, increasingly intractable regional prob- same period. lems, and the global impact of disastrous Third World In anticipation of an accelerated reduction, PBAD conditions. began work in October on a closely held study of force Butler maintained that the US was the only power with reduction options. This “Quiet Study” proposed criteria the capacity to manage the major forces at work in the for proceeding with force reductions and made specific world. Implementing this new use of US power in order recommendations for cuts, targeting forces that would to shape the emerging world in accordance with US not be decisive in a global war, those with aging equip- interests would require a coherent strategy that defined ment and therefore limited combat effectiveness, and US vital interests, decided the role of the military, and those whose growth was outpacing the growth of the then set the necessary forces in place. It would also Soviet threat. On Feb. 24, 1989, J-8 presented its recom- require dealing with the nation’s fiscal problems. When mendations to [the JCS Chairman, Adm. William] Crowe he presented his views to the Air Staff in September Jr., requesting his approval of PBAD’s guidelines for 1988, he anticipated that budgetary retrenchment would reductions. However, Crowe believed that to pursue lead to a major restructuring of the armed forces. If they force reductions without a change in strategy, for which did not undertake this task themselves, they would find he looked to President Bush, would invite further cuts in reductions forced upon them. the defense budget. Initially, Butler thought that the changes he had out- Although Crowe did not act on its recommendations, lined would take place over a decade and that the US J-8 continued its work. In July, PBAD undertook “Quiet would have to deal with them within the context of an Study II,” which it completed in late October 1989, after ongoing relationship with the Soviet Union. However, in the arrival of the new chairman [Powell]. Continuing to the autumn of 1988, when he traveled to the Soviet Union base its projections on an accelerated decline in defense as head of the US team to negotiate an agreement on the funding, PBAD believed that DoD must come to terms prevention of dangerous military activities, he found with fiscal realities. Accordingly, Quiet Study II pro- that the Soviet Union was in worse condition than he had posed guidelines for matching long-term force structure realized. He concluded that the shift in the balance of and modernization programs to expected resources and world power would therefore be accelerated. then using these guidelines to develop Joint Staff recom- As vice director of J-5, Butler pursued the develop- mendations on the budget cuts to be proposed by the ment of his ideas on the need for a new US approach to services and OSD during the upcoming budget and pro- the world independently of the Strategy Division’s ef- gram review. Using these guidelines, it also outlined forts to shift the focus of strategic planning away from detailed sample cuts for the Chairman’s consideration. the Soviet Union. However, Joint Staff planners had Quiet Study I had assumed that there would be no heard him present his strategic overview elsewhere, and change in strategy. But because of the changes in the his ideas about the new strategic tasks facing the US strategic environment caused by the continued diminu- were among the factors influencing their attempts to tion of the Soviet threat, Quiet Study II postulated a shift place greater emphasis on regional rather than global in focus from the East–West confrontation in Europe to planning. regional contingencies. It examined the potential impact on force structure of the changed strategic environment J-8’s “Quiet Study” as well as the domestic fiscal situation, asking not only what forces the US would be able to fund but also what While these changes in strategic thinking were taking missions it wished its forces to perform. Basing its place, the Program and Budget Analysis Division of the choice of conventional missions upon the concept of Force Structure, Resources, and Assessment Directorate forward presence, Quiet Study II assumed that, by the (J-8) had begun to explore the implications of antici- next century, land-based forces overseas would be re- pated further budget reductions on force structure, which duced to half their current size. The study based its AIR FORCE Magazine / December 2000 57 recommendations for force cuts on the necessity of as- to make hard choices when submitting its budget re- suring superiority against any potential adversary. Its quests. criteria for retention of conventional forces therefore Powell elaborated on these views in his Sept.

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