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A Review Essay 1 James Fallows, National Defense (New York: Random House, 1981), 204 pages. James Fallows' book, National Defense, has much to recommend it. First of all, it is lucidly written. I appreciated his prose style as I read the book; I envied it as I committed to writing my own ideas on defense. More importantly, Fallows sets a high goal-to focus the defense debate on issues that are significant, to discuss what Americandefense objectives should be, and what policies and programs can most efficientlyachieve these objectives. This is a refreshing change from the narrow debates on specific weapons, or from the partisan cries that the United States is spending too little or too much on defense. Unfortunately, the substance of the book is not equal to its literary merit. Fallows' treatment of defense problems often fails to grasp the key underlying issues; as a result, the solutions he offers tend to be simplistic. The best part of National Defense, in my view, was the first chapter, where Fallows presents the "realities" on which his analysis-or any analysis-of defense issues must depend. This is an excellent beginning and the "realities" he choosesU.S. economic limits, the unpredictable nature of the "threats" an American defense must accommodate, and the importance of intangible qualities (weather, human error, etc.) in warfare-all are significant and his treatment of them effective. Inasmuch as his analysis flows from these "realities ," it is clear that his conclusions can only be as good as his perceptions of which realities are significant. Inexplicably, he left out two major realities which have a driving effect on the whole defense issue, and this omission in his first chapter flaws the analysis which follows in subsequent chapters. He omits the fundamental point that the effectiveness of U.S. forces must be measured relative to those of the Soviet Union. American forces may face less challenging tasks, but the United States must design them so that they could prevail in combat with the forces the Soviets actually have or are likely to have in the future. It is misleading to imply that one fighter airplane is better than another because it is simpler or cheaper if it could be readily defeated by its counterpart Soviet fighter. The reality is that modern Soviet fighter aircraft are complex and effective fighting machines (probably more William Perry is currently a managing partner at the Sun Francisco investment firm of Hambrecht 6 Quist. From April 1977-Ianuary 1981, Dr. Pery served as Undersecretay of Defense for Research and Engineering. lnternational Security, Spring 1982 (Vol. 6, No. 4) 0162-2869/82/040174-09$02.50/0 @ 1982 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 174 Review Essay I 175 complex and costly than their U.S. counterparts) and could not be successfully engaged by the simpler aircraft envisaged by Fallows in later chapters of his book. Fallows also omits the fundamental point that the defense competition between the United States and the Soviet Union is profoundly influenced by the fact that the Soviet Union has remarkably cheap labor compared to America’s affluent society. A number of critical facts flow from this. One is that the United States spends more than half of its defense budget on manpower while the Soviets-with twice the manpower-spend only a fourth of theirs on manpower. As a result, they can devote half of their budget to equipment procurement while we devote less than a quarter of ours to equipment. This leads us then to a ”reality” of overriding importance -that even with equal defense budgets, the Soviets can-and dospend twice as much on equipment procurement as the United States. This fundamental and overwhelming advantagewhich has led to the Soviets’ outproducing the United States in quantities of military equipment-seems to have escaped Fallows’ attention while he searches for devils in the U.S.’s inefficient procurement system. God knows, our procurement system could stand improvement (so could that of the Soviets, I suspect), and every new administration sets out to make those improvements with an abundance of helpful suggestions from journalists and Congressmen. But it is...

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