The myth of the two-front war: over-preparing for a two-front war that will almost certainly never occur is costing us billions.

• Author: Korb, Lawrence J.

Since the end of World War II, the United States has decided that it is in our national interest to maintain a large standing peacetime military. But the appropriate size and shape of a peacetime military force is a subject of acrimonious debate in this country. The debate is so heated because the outcome determines how much this nation will spend on defense as well as the roles and missions of each of the four armed services. This debate promises to occupy much of the time of William Cohen, Clinton's new defense secretary. Before outlining the choices confronting Cohen and the country, it may be useful to discuss briefly how this issue has been handled over the past half-century.

In the 1950s, President Eisenhower, fearful of bankrupting American society and of the power of the military-industrial complex, limited the military to a fixed percentage of GDP and adopted a policy of relying on nuclear weapons to make up for any perceived shortfalls in the size of the conventional forces. The Kennedy administration felt the military should be able to fight simultaneously two major conventional wars, one in Europe and one in Asia, as well as handle a minor contingency in the Third World. This necessitated a large increase in force size or structure and in the level of defense spending even before the war in Vietnam.

In the early 1970s, Richard Nixon eliminated one of the major wars from Pentagon contingency planning and slashed defense forces and spending accordingly. Ironically, Nixon used the defense dividend to double aid to state and local governments, index entitlements, and establish EPA, OSHA, and AMTRAK. (No wonder Mark Shields calls him our last liberal president.) This "one and a half war" policy remained in effect until Ronald Reagan adopted a strategy of horizontal escalation, which postulated that any war with the Soviet Union would automatically be a world-wide conflict, not confined just to the European theater. This enabled Reagan to rationalize increasing defense spending by over 50 percent in real terms in his first four years in office.

The military strategies of each of our Cold War commanders in chief was subject to intense criticism during his time in office. Eisenhower was criticized for relying too much on nuclear weapons and for allowing a "missile gap" to develop; Kennedy for embracing a strategy more ambitious than his budget; Nixon and Carter for spending too little on defense and thus creating a hollow military; and Reagan for spending far more than was needed to get the Soviets to call a halt to the Cold War.

When the Soviet Empire began to collapse in 1989, General Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, fearful that Americans would demand "too large" a peace dividend, developed the Rogue Doctrine...