Departing Perry Warns Against Further Cuts in Military

WASHINGTON — American military strength is now “about the minimum required” for the nation to carry out its role as global superpower, departing Defense Secretary William J. Perry warned Wednesday.

Speaking as Washington officials considered further cuts in the armed forces, Perry asserted that the one-third cut in military personnel over the last decade had not hurt the Pentagon’s ability to apply force in distant corners of the world.

But the current force level, he told a group of reporters, is “about the minimum required to allow the United States to be able to maintain its role as a global power . . . to meet the kind of contingencies that may arise. So I do think that we cannot and should not reduce below the force structure we have now.”

The Clinton administration is reportedly preparing to release a fiscal 1998 budget proposal that would trim another $5 billion from the $260 billion designated earlier for the 12-month period. At the same time, defense officials are engaged in a wholesale review of defense functions that is expected to conclude this spring with recommendations for further cuts.

Defense Secretary-designate William S. Cohen, who is expected to take Perry’s job next week, will preside over the so-called quadrennial defense review.

But Perry said that, if he were still in the job, “my going-in position is that I would not seriously consider a reduction in force structure.”

“The force structure we have now is necessary to carry out our global responsibilities,” Perry said. “And that’s not a theoretical view. We’ve been meeting those responsibilities for the last four years and I can tell you we do not have any surplus force structure.”

The “force structure” generally refers to the number of military units and supporting materiel. The cuts of the past decade have reduced the military force from 2.1 million personnel to fewer than 1.5 million.

Perry said that support personnel could be cut if they become unnecessary because of the closing of bases and depots or improvements in efficiency. But Perry said that he would “want to see the efficiencies demonstrated first” before any reductions are made.

Some defense analysts speculated that the chief purpose of Perry’s remarks was to convince those who succeed him of the necessity of holding firm against pressure for further cuts. “I think he wanted to lay down a marker for his successors,” said John Hillen, a defense analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Perry declined to comment on reports that the Clinton budget would call for a cut of $5 billion in defense spending, which now accounts for about 16% of all federal outlays. The budget, like every other spending plan, has “some problems” associated with it, he said. “But it is on balance a good budget.”

He said that the plan has the virtue of putting spending for modernization of forces “back on an increasing slope again.”

Spending to upgrade equipment has been declining for a number of years, in part because of cost overruns and because funds were diverted to pay for unfunded emergency operations, he noted.

“We’ve made very important improvements in that operation in the past year or so,” Perry said.