In 1964 the Braves played in Milwaukee, the Dow Jones average rose to 891, Bloomingdale's men's shirts cost $5.95, an Oldsmobile cost $3,495, the top-rated television program was "Bonanza." And the first CH-46 helicopters entered service with the Fleet Marine Forces.
Those helicopters, which would carry Lt. Charles Krulak into battle in Vietnam, today serve the training and operations of young Marines serving under Gen. Charles Krulak, commandant of the Corps. At least they do when they are operational and not crashing.The replacement - the marvelous MV-22 tilt-rotor Osprey - is coming, on a procurement timetable that, although not fast enough, is faster than had previously been planned. Stretching out procurements increases per unit costs. It also increases pressure to buy less new technology, or even to "economize" by patching and mending old ones, such as the CH-46s.
Bear this in mind as the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) dismays people who still think the defense budget has not suffered enough. They evidently think that peace keeps itself, and that deterrence - conflict prevented - is not dramatic enough to be a politically rewarding expenditure.
The defense budget has been a target-rich environment for factions seeking increased domestic spending. This in spite of the fact that as defense spending has shrunk to a pre-Pearl Harbor portion of GDP, the military's deployments have increased.
The weapons purchased during Reagan's buildup - never mind LBJ's - are wearing out. So are the military men and women who are experiencing an erosion of the quality of their lives, a result of cheese-paring budget-cutters and the increased tempo of operations.
Frederick Kagan and David Fautua, history professors at West Point, note that in the nine Bush and Clinton years, troops have been sent abroad (to the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia, etc.) more often than in the 20 years of Nixon through Reagan.
Active duty personnel have been cut 27 percent since 1991, so deployment requirements for soldiers and airmen have increased - 300 percent to 400 percent since the end of the Cold War, to levels comparable to those of sailors on ships. James Kitfield of the National Journal reports that the departure rate of Air Force pilots - trained at a cost exceeding $1 million apiece - is up 40 percent in the past year.
In 1864 impatient Americans accepted U.S. Grant's sledgehammer, high-casualty approach to war. However, since World War I, when more Americans died "on the line" in three months than were to die in 10 years in Vietnam, the nation has been looking for technologies that will minimize casualties. Gen. Frederick Kroesen, former Army vice chief of staff, says this is the recurring human dream of a "silver bullet" technology - crossbow, machine gun, tank, poison gas, airplane, nuclear weapons - that will enable the possessor of the technology to turn warfare into a clash of his materiel against the enemy's men.
However, U.S. modernization programs have been cut 50 percent in a decade. Besides, wars are still won when men with rifles occupy ground. Furthermore, the report of a task force for the Foreign Policy Research Institute warns of "the `demilitarization of the military' as U.S. forces engage in the politics, ambiguities and complexities of `peacekeeping,' often at the expense of their `war-fighting' skills and training." In the FPRI report, retired Col. Harry G. Summers Jr., endorsing the judgment of historian Sir Michael Howard, says that America must "be prepared to wage war at the level of the Agrarian Age, for old verities about will and courage still apply."
The QDR reaffirms a capability of coping with two "major regional conflicts" (MRCs) nearly simultaneously. Defense Secretary William Perry defined an MRC as involving an enemy fielding up to 1 million men and 2,000 to 4,000 tanks. Kagan and Fautua, writing in Commentary, argue that not only can the U.S. Army not conduct two MRCs, it could not conduct even one "unless it withdrew from most of its international commitments."
As always, there are those who assure us that we have arrived on the sunny uplands of lasting peace. But from Donald Kagan, Yale historian and classicist, comes a cautionary reminder. Between 1924 and 1929 Britain's chancellor of the exchequer - a former first lord of the admiralty - repeatedly cut naval spending to pay for social programs. He was particularly dismissive of the idea of a war with Japan: "I do not believe there is the slightest chance of it in our lifetime." He was to be prime minister when Singapore fell.
If even the prescient Churchill, often regarded as a Cassandra, erred on the side of optimism, how likely is it that our democracy, driven by short-term calculations of domestic politics, is making prudent provisions for defense?