Inexcusable Restraint: The Decline of American Military Power in the 1970s

Inexcusable Restraint The Decline of American Military Power in the 1970s Colin S. Gray and Jeffrey G. Barlow I I t is the thesis of this article that the legacy of the 1970s has been-and indeed remains-a potentially very dangerous mismatch between U.S. security objectives and the capabilities provided to support those objectives. Furthermore, we contend that the cumulatively very substantial adverse shift in the complex military balance beween East and West during the 1970s: (1)was discernible at the time to those who wished to see; and (2) at least with respect to broad trends is not particularly controversial. The Carter Administration has to be the particular, though far from exclusive , target of the charge of neglecting U.S. defenses, because the more salient facts concerning the slide in American military performance were far clearer in the late than in the early 1970s. Recognition of adverse trends in relative military capability and, more arguably, consequent dangers of political disadvantage was by no means confined to the conservative campaign rhetoric of 1980or to the many publications of The Committee on the Present Danger. On the contrary, it is instructive to note what two well-respected senior officials of the Carter Administration had to say in 1979-1980 about American defense and arms control performance over a period that included, at that time of writing and speaking, three years of their "watch." In January 1980, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown offered the following somber assessment : Critical turning points in the histories of nations are difficult to recognize at the time. Usually, they become clear only in retrospect. Nonetheless, the United States may well be at such a turning point today. We face a decision that we have been deferring for too long; we can defer it no longer. We must decide Colin S. Gray is President of the National Institutefor Public Policy. Dr. Gray w a s Director of National Security Studies at the Hudson lnstitute from 1976 to 1981, and is the author of numerous books and articles on U.S., Soviet, and NATO defense policies. Jeffrey G. Barlow is a senior military analyst with National Security Research, 1nc.lNational Institute for Public Policy. From 2978 to 1983, Dr. Barlow w a s the senior defense analyst for The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. The section on strategic forces in this article was written by Dr. Gray, and the section on general purpose forces is by Dr. Barlow. lnternnttonal Security,Fall 1985(Vol. 10, No. 2) 01985by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 27 International Security I 28 now whether we intend to remain the strongest nation in the world. The alternative is to let ourselves slip into inferiority. . . While the Secretary of Defense of an administration that had had three years in which to take action was talking ominously about “turning points in the histories of nations” and was speculating about the dangers of inferiority , a principal architect of Carter Administration arms control policy was telling the American public that: Arms control has essentially failed. Three decades of U.S.-Soviet negotiations to limit arms competition have done little more than to codify the arms race.2 Opinions differed as to the character of the problem for U.S. national security bequeathed by the 1970s as a legacy for the 1980s (was a “window of American vulnerability” or, far worse, a “window of Soviet opportunity” likely to open, and so f ~ r t h ? ) , ~ and as to the identity and degree of guilt of those responsible; but the fuel of the problem was not at all in question. In his final Annual Report as Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown demonstrated, with almost painful clarity, that the proximate problem was U.S. underinvestment in defense over a ten-year period. Statistics can lie or mislead, but two figures tell the essential story. (See Figures 1and 2.) The unarguable fact is that the Reagan Administration, in 1981, confronted a decade-long pattern of a higher level of Soviet defense investment. Judgments as to the superiority or inferiority of forces must always be rendered specific to time, place, and issue...