DATE=01/04/01

TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT

TITLE=MILITARIZED U-S

NUMBER=5-48739

BYLINE=ED WARNER

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: Many observers say that since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been struggling to find a foreign policy appropriate to the new era. Now according to one veteran analyst, the U-S military is largely determining that policy. It is not a conspiracy, he insists, but the result of civilian inaction and confusion that poses a genuine danger. V-O-A's Ed Warner reports his thoughts and some reaction from two other analysts.

TEXT: William Pfaff says the United States began the new millennium as the most heavily militarized nation on earth, and possibly the most frightened.

That is how he describes the current U-S strategic outlook. In the aftermath of the Cold War, he writes in "The National Interest" quarterly, Americans have inflated potential enemies to near Cold War levels and in the process have resorted to unnecessary military force.

That has given the U-S military undue prominence in the making of foreign policy, he writes. He says American military officers have established relations with their counterparts in other countries that escape civilian scrutiny or Congressional budget control. This represents an immense shift of influence, says Mr. Pfaff, and leads to military rather than diplomatic solutions to conflicts.

He believes the shift is partly due to President Clinton's vulnerability on the question of military service and what he says is the administration's incomplete grasp of foreign policy. But he does not expect incoming President George Bush to be in a much stronger position to reassert civilian control.

Boston University Professor of International Relations Andrew Bacevich, a retired U-S Army officer, largely agrees:

/// BACEVICH ACT ///

Civilians, in their fascination with military power and their increased expectations of what military power ought to be able to do in the aftermath of the Gulf War, have increasingly surrendered authority for U-S foreign policy to senior military officers - particularly the regional commanders in chief who are in charge of U-S central command, for example, in the Middle East, the (Persian) Gulf, or in Latin America.

/// END ACT ///

Those commanders, says Mr. Bacevich, do not always pursue the best policies. He cites the decision to send the U-S-S Cole to Yemen, where it was bombed with loss of American life. The destroyer was part of a military plan to engage more closely with Yemen, what is called - shaping the international environment.

/// BACEVICH ACT ///

What is it that equips a four-star Marine to judge whether or not sending U-S warships to buy fuel from the Yemeni Government is going to translate into more favorable relations between the United States and that country? I do not know what makes him competent to make those decisions, but that is the way policy is made these days. He does get to make those kinds of decisions.

/// END ACT ///

He has always made those kinds of decisions, responds novelist Ralph Peters, a former U-S army intelligence officer. He says ordinarily the military would rather not make those decisions, but throughout American history it has often been required.

/// PETERS ACT ///

There are environments in which the military officer is the most knowledgeable or the best able to deal with other military or irregular violent counterparts on the ground. There has always been something of a division of labor, but to imagine that somehow right now the military has slipped its leash just sounds silly to me. Certainly a President has to use all the tools of foreign policy available to him at different times.

/// END ACT ///

Diplomacy does not always work, says Mr. Peters, and the military is called in because it operates closer to the edge of chaos, and today's world is quite chaotic.

Judging from his own army experience, Mr. Peters says military men can fill a void left by diplomats. Pakistan is an example:

/// PETERS ACT ///

The Pakistani generals, who I actually find well-meaning figures, have much more respect for other military counterparts. They have found U-S administrations and certainly Congress to be uninformed, willful, and committed to doing things strictly for domestic political consumption rather than based on what the Pakistanis would see as a just response. Military people that I knew had a lot better access than diplomats, who were generally regarded as something of an annoyance.

/// END ACT ///

In today's globalized world, says Mr. Peters, American military men provide key linkages that would otherwise be absent. He says American foreign policy is unthinkable without them, even if more thought should be given to their precise role. (SIGNED)

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