Defense vision MIA?

Recent Democratic debates on national security have focused on charges and countercharges over who is better prepared to be commander in chief. Not enough attention has been paid to whether any of the major Democratic candidates offers a vision of U.S. foreign policy substantially different from that set out by the Bush administration.

While Barack Obama has criticized Hillary Clinton for promoting a “Bush lite” foreign policy, his own advocacy of preventive strikes against al Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan is uncomfortably close to the Bush doctrine of striking first and asking questions later.

And Mrs. Clinton’s insistence on keeping “all options on the table” in dealing with potential adversaries — presumably including the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons — represents old thinking that should have no place in a post-September 11, 2001, foreign policy.

But perhaps the most troubling sign that an Obama or Clinton administration would be more likely to pursue business as usual than a new national security vision is their call for building up U.S. armed forces. Both have urged adding 80,000 troops beyond current levels.

Advocating more troops raises an obvious question. What would the additional troops be for? Since all Democratic candidates claim to favor a withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq in relatively short order, the increase could not be meant to reinforce the U.S. presence there, unless they plan to maintain the occupation far longer than advertised.

Do Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama want to ensure that the U.S. military is ready to engage in future Iraq-style occupations? Do they contemplate multiple humanitarian interventions that would involve hundreds of thousands of troops? Or is the call for more troops simply a political insurance to insulate them from Republican claims they are “soft” on terrorism?

None of these rationales is persuasive. In fact, a case can be made that an increase in troop strength is just as likely to detract from U.S. security as improve it.

As currently configured, the U.S. military is better at overthrowing governments or dealing with conventional threats than it is at fighting insurgencies or striking terrorist strongholds. Bringing in more troops without radically altering the way current forces are trained and equipped will not change this reality.

Increasing Special Forces for use in antiterrorist actions is a reasonable mission but does not require 80,000 more troops. Some of these units can be developed by training personnel already in the armed forces, rather than using new recruits who would take several years to attain adequate readiness. Unless Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama can clearly articulate the mission or missions requiring additional forces, they would be better served sticking to the issue of how to rebuild forces at existing levels after the trauma of Iraq.

Despite all of his talk of military reform and a “revolution in military affairs,” Donald Rumsfeld was only able to make changes at the margins of Pentagon procurement and strategy. For their part, none of the major Democratic candidates have seriously taken up the challenge of planning to reconfigure our sprawling military apparatus to meet current threats.

One place to start would be canceling programs like the F-22 combat aircraft, the V-22 Osprey, and the Virginia class submarine. These systems were designed when the Soviet military was deemed the primary threat, rather than the current challenge posed by a loose network of terrorist groups waging unconventional warfare.

In his first campaign for the White House, even George W. Bush talked about the need to discard “Cold War relics” in favor of lighter, more maneuverable weapons systems. And despite former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s penchant for alienating the very constituencies he needed to implement military reform, two major systems — the Crusader artillery system and the Comanche helicopter — were canceled on his watch.

Unless the Democratic front-runners begin criticizing unnecessary weapons and defining new missions for the armed forces, their record on military reform — if elected — may not even match the Bush administration’s disappointing performance.

William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation.