Keeping Up with the Ivans

After its misadventures in Indochina, the nation is feeling its way, sometimes truculently, toward a redefinition of its influence, military and otherwise, in the world. The U.S. has taken on a certain bristle, a tendency that was evident last week in Senate debate over the defense budget. In the Mayaguez incident, Gerald Ford, indebted more to McLuhan than to Clausewitz, struck off an image of American decisiveness after years in the Asian morass. Ford also hastened to Europe to reassure the NATO allies of America's steadfastness (see THE WORLD).

Cold Realism. It has become an exercise in bouncing back, proving that the U.S., despite its recent grogginess from Indochina, is as strong and clear-eyed as ever. Ford had hardly unpacked from Europe last week when he flew up to West Point to tell the graduating cadets that he had found in the NATO nations "a new sense of confidence in the United States." That same day, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller spoke to the middies at Annapolis about the need for a "cold realism" in American military strength. "We must remain aware," he said, "that the Soviets are increasing their military forces throughout the world." At the same time, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger was in Colorado Springs insisting to the Air Force Academy graduates that American might "will remain an indispensable, though hopefully tacit element in the maintenance of world order."

As those three spoke, the Senate was engaged in a broader discussion of American military needs: how much is required, how much should be spent elsewhere (in the cities, for example), how much is too much and how the hardware relates to the intentions of U.S. foreign policy. The immediate issue was a $25 billion weapons-procurement authorization bill--part of the $104.7 billion "total obligational authority" requested by the Defense Department. That would be a $15.7 billion increase and would provide for three new Army divisions, for development of the new B-1 strategic bomber (at $84 million apiece) and for the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft that would cost $118.8 million apiece, the most expensive plane ever built by the Air Force.

Why, some Senators wondered, did the U.S. require such an augmented arsenal just at the moment when its vast expenditures in Southeast Asia had ended? Liberals such as Massachusetts' Edward Kennedy argued for reordered priorities. Said Minnesota's Walter Mondale: "We have kept our military machine polished but have let our cities decay, our transportation systems collapse, our national unity dissolve." A counterargument held that a reduction in defense spending would actually damage the domestic economy by throwing thousands out of work. The liberals' central argument was that, as Kennedy said, with 22,000 tactical nuclear weapons stockpiled round the world, "we have nuclear weapons in excess of our security needs." Critics of more military spending also wanted a clearer statement of just what foreign policy objectives all the hardware was meant to support. Other Senators countered that American foreign policy would be ineffective and even impotent without a strong military.

In the wake of Viet Nam, most of the Senate feared that cutting back defense spending might suggest weakness and American withdrawal. Thus in one vote after another, the Senate beat back the liberals' amendments that would have cut into the budget. By 57 to 32, it defeated George McGovern's effort to delete $725 million for continued development of the B-1 bomber. By 56 to 27, it rejected Kennedy's amendment that would have cut $203 million to purchase 50 Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missiles. By 58 to 38, it defeated an attempt by Missouri's Thomas Eagleton to suspend purchase of more AWACS planes, at a cost of $690 million. For the moment, the Senate was clearly following the logic of Armed Services Committee Chairman John Stennis: "It is an uncertain world we live in today. The United States must make it clear that it will maintain the weapons and manpower necessary to protect its own interests."

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