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
Copyright (c) 1997, Times Mirror Company

The 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."