Pentagon Plans Bigger Noncombat Role
Military: Armed forces should prepare to expand controversial missions in
peacekeeping, humanitarian aid and war on drugs, draft report says.
By PAUL RICHTER, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTONThe Pentagon's strategic blueprint for the
next decade will increasingly emphasize the military's
expandingand controversialnoncombat roles, from
peacekeeping and drug interdiction to humanitarian aid, officials said
Wednesday.
Although such missions have critics on Capitol Hill and in the
military itself, a Pentagon draft report says the armed forces should
be equipped to take on many more of the two dozen such
deployments that the United States has mounted since the fall of the
Berlin Wall in 1989.
Such assignments are "just reality," said Lt. Col. Tim Muchmore,
an Army staff officer who has been closely involved in the
Pentagon's study. "They're out there for us."
The report, due for completion in midMay, predicts that the
Cold War's end has brought a strategic "pause" that will leave the
United States an unrivaled superpower until at least 2010.
Nonetheless, it calls for the armed forces to master a full range of
military roleswhat one official called "fullspectrum dominance."
As in earlier studies of the military's mission, the Pentagon report
calls for the armed forces to be prepared to handle two major
regional conflictssuch as those that could explode in such
international hot spots as Iraq and Koreain "close succession."
The military has been spending an average of $3 billion a year on
noncombat deployments that involve an average of 20,000 troops
at a time. At the moment, U.S. troops are on peacekeeping
missions in Bosnia, Macedonia, Haiti, Iraq and the Sinai.
Some top military officials have come to look more favorably in
recent years on such efforts, in part because they keep defense
funds flowing at a time of postCold War downsizing and budget
shrinkage. They also view them as an effective way to pacify
regions before battles become bloodier.
But critics, who include the Republican congressional leadership,
complain that these deployments assign key units to repetitive, often
dulling tasks when they should be training to improve their military
skills.
A recent study prepared for the Army of its troops serving in
Bosnia found that prolonged duty there hurt combat readiness and
morale; some soldiers were so unhappy they quit the military.
Some officials familiar with the Pentagon report said that even as
it calls for the military to expand its role, left unanswered so far is
the core question of what functions and personnel will be sacrificed
to pay for new activities.
Most predictions call for defense spending to remain flat at
about $250 billion in current dollars over the next few years.
One Senate aide noted that GOP senators, as well as some
Democrats, have argued that noncombat deployments should be
rare because they "take away from readiness and soak up money
that should be going to modernization" of the armed forces. Not
long ago, the aide said, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen was
"saying exactly that" as a Maine Republican serving on the Senate
Armed Services Committee.
The current study is being prepared for Cohen, who will oversee
its final form and send it to Congress.
Insiders say the study will probably not result in a
recommendation that the military set up and equip special units for
noncombat missions.
Some advocates of these missions have argued that specially
trained and equipped troops could be a less costly and more
efficient way to handle such situations. But military officials believe
this approach would divert troops who should be trained and
prepared for the conflicts that more directly affect American
security.
The report, which has been circulating in draft form for several
weeks among Pentagon officials, was mandated by Congress and
must be prepared every four years.
Pentagon officials said that many parts of the report have yet to
be written and that portions may be changed before the socalled
Quadrennial Defense Review is completed by Cohen.
Before the report is completed, heated battles are likely among
defense officials on which parts of the military might be scaled back
to pay for such recommendations as expansion of noncombat
deployments. There has been talk of cutting two activeduty Army
divisions, two Air Force wings and possibly some Navy facilities.
As details of the draft report have spread, some critics have
faulted it for lacking sufficient scope. Michael Vickers, director of
strategic studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments, a Washington think tank, termed the report a
"compromise document that nobody is very happy with. They've
spent a lot of time to end up changing only a few things at the
margins."

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