AMERICANS ARE FAR less secure than they believe themselves to be and the Pentagon is ill-prepared to protect them, says the second report of the U.S. Commission on National Security.
Its first report, issued last year, was equally gloomy, painting an apocalyptic picture of threats we will face in the 21st century. A final report, due next year, will give specific recommendations on how to deal with them. Established in 1998, the commission is chaired by former senators Gary Hart of Colorado and Warren Rudman of New Hampshire. Other members include former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young and retired Army Gen. John Galvin.A key finding of the panel so far is that the "two major wars" strategy -- being able to fight simultaneously in the Persian Gulf and Korea is outdated. We must change our "strategic habits of the past half century," it says, to handle "more varied and complex contingencies" such as peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
Yet the report also urges "a prudent set of limits" on overseas deployments and "a finer calculus" used to determine the benefits of sending U.S. troops abroad. "America must not exhaust itself by limitless commitments," it advises.
This is a familiar refrain in Congress, which complains that ill-defined peacekeeping missions in places like Bosnia and Kosovo erode our readiness to fight "The Big One," let alone two major regional wars. The Pentagon says this isn't so, countering that lawmakers intent on maintaining unnecessary bases in their states are wasting money that could be better spent developing new weapons systems.
On the home front, the Hart-Rudman panel says we "must make it a national priority to improve the quality of primary and secondary education, particularly in mathematics and the sciences."
It should have added geography. As we become more dependent on the global economy, the inadequacy of our schooling becomes more apparent. Not only do many American children have difficulty in locating other nations on the globe, they can't find their own.
Question in Trivial Pursuit: What country are 14 percent of American students unable to pinpoint on a map. Answer: the United States. One thing the panel agrees upon with both Congress and the administration is the need for a National Missile Defense system. The Pentagon is due to make a deployment recommendation this summer, but President Clinton may delay a decision until the end of the year or leave it up to his successor to buy more time for arms control talks with Moscow.
Russia and China both oppose NMD, contending that it would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and start a new arms race.
Some members of Congress want to scrap ABM because it was signed with a nation that no longer exists: the Soviet Union. The Clinton administration wants to save the treaty by amending it to permit national missile shields. But the Russians, who have just ratified START II and the nuclear test ban treaty, threaten to tear up all arms control agreements and suspend talks on START III if ABM is tampered with.
In February, Russia and China asked the 66-nation Conference on Disarmament to begin debate on a treaty banning the testing and deployment of weapons in outer space. The United States blocked their bid, but is under fresh attack at a United Nations review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty now under way in New York.
The treaty, which took effect in 1970, committed the nuclear powers of that era -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- to pursue disarmament in return for a pledge from non-nuclear states not to acquire nuclear weapons. But, 30 years later, India and Pakistan have joined the nuclear club while its original members are still far from achieving their disarmament goals.
The nuclear have-nots demand "an unequivocal undertaking (from the haves) to accomplish the speedy and total elimination of their nuclear arsenals and to engage without delay in an accelerated process of negotiations, thus achieving nuclear disarmament."
We are in particularly bad odor at this year's review because our Senate has not ratified the test ban treaty.
Contact Holger Jensen of the Denver Rocky Mountain News at http://www.denver-rmn.com.