Interview: Harold Brown with Philip Geyelin

INTERVIEW: HAROLD BROWN WITH PHILIP GEYELIN It is the nature ofany democraticprocess for the challengers to accent differences with the incumbents—to inflate, if not to create issues. The national security/defense debate in the 1980 U.S. presidential campaign was no exception. Ronald Reagan and the Republicans largely ignored the Carter administration's post-Afghanistan stiffening and pounded away instead on Early Carter: human rights, East-West accommodation, defense cuts. The United States, the argument went, was too weak to negotiate, incapable of bringing effective force to bear anywhere in the world, and dangerously vulnerable to Soviet strategic nuclear superiority. The campaign theme spilled over into the Reagan administration's early months. There was a huge increase in defense obligations. There was top-priority for a "strategic consensus" and an enlarged American military presence in the Persian Gulf. Everything from El Salvador to Africa cast the Free World in a new cold war against encroaching communist expansion. The appearance, certainly, was one ofprofound strategic change. What was the reality? How much was genuinely new and different about the Reagan administration defense budget and how much was largely a difference ofdegree—apicking up and advancing ofestablished strategy where the Carter administration, in its own evolution, had left off? Harold Brown, Secretary ofDefense throughout the Carter presidency and now Distinguished Visiting Professor ofNational Security Affairs at SAIS, offers his assessment of the new look in American defense policy and gives some prescriptions of his own in the following interview with Philip Geyelin, syndicated columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group and Editor in Residence at SAIS. GEYELIN: Let me begin by asking you how, in a general sense, the Reagan defense budget differs from what you had hoped to see adopted had President Carter been reelected? BROWN: Well, we had submitted a fiscal year 1981 budget before we left office, and the Reagan budget, which went up in the form ofamend101 102 SAIS REVIEW ments, built on that. Fundamentally, the program is the same, with some changes in the funding and some additions. GEYELIN: Accepting that the figures are very different, to what extent is the direction different? BROWN: In the first place, they made an attempt to fund fully the expected costs ofthe program. We had made different estimates ofsome ofthe costs. The Reagan budget fully funded the pay increase, whereas the Carter administration presumed some absorption of the pay increase . The latter is the general way that those things are done and, in the end, leads to some erosion of the program. So the Reagan people tried fully to fund what the costs were. They eroded it somewhat themselves by making reestimates of inflation lower, at least in the years ahead—and even in fiscal 1982—than the Carter budget had presumed. But they fully funded not only the pay increases but also, I think, fully reflected the increased costs ofoil. They also went ahead and bought additional spare parts, additional munitions , and so forth. GEYELIN: But do these increases suggest clear differences in strategic concept that you can detect from the numbers? BROWN: First, I have to say what was the same: They merely added funds to the money that we had put in for the Rapid Deployment Force, specifically for the operation ofthe task forces in the Indian Ocean and construction of facilities in countries in that part of the world with which we had agreements. The big programmatic additions were $2.5 billion for a manned bomber and probably about $5 billion for naval ship construction. Thus, a total of about $8 billion went for, or was included in fiscal 1982 for those activities. In most cases, but not all, those were ships that we would have built later on—an extra attack submarine, extra frigates and cruisers. But they did add a carrier, or long lead-time items for a carrier, which we had not decided on. And they added money for an aircraft carrier and two battleships to be taken out ofmothballs. GEYELIN: That still doesn't sound like a fundamentally different approach—at least as the issue was laid out in the campaign. BROWN: Twenty-six billion dollars in new obligations is a...