THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 21, 1994 TAG: 9409210422
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
The Pentagon essentially has no idea how much it will cost to restore democracy to Haiti, its two top numbers crunchers acknowledged Tuesday.
``No number has any basis. If you want to use any, use $500 million,'' Deputy Secretary of Defense John M. Deutch told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Deutch and John A. Hamre, the Pentagon's comptroller, said uncertainties about the length and scope of U.S. involvement in Haiti make any estimate of its cost a matter of guesswork. Committee Republicans said the uncertainty underscores the need for the Clinton administration to be wary about getting involved in Haiti-style operations.
Hamre said planners came up with the $500 million estimate last week as a cost for a full-scale invasion and an occupation to follow. The figure would carry through September 1995 should Americans remain in Haiti that long, he said.
But the weekend peace agreement and the unopposed landings of American forces on Monday and Tuesday should lead to savings, the officials suggested. They noted that early estimates of the cost of relief efforts in Rwanda were roughly double the final total of $125 million.
While Republicans charged that the cost of humanitarian operations in Rwanda, Somalia and Bosnia, as well as Haiti, will eat away at the military's ability to pay for needed equipment and meet other expenses, Deutch and Hamre said those efforts have consumed only a sliver of the more than $230 billion defense budget.
``We're talking about one-half to six-tenths of one percent of the budget,'' Hamre said. When fiscal 1994 ends Sept. 30, the Defense Department expects to have spent about $1.5 billion on peacekeeping and humanitarian projects, he added.
Hamre and Deutch came in for sharp grilling from committee Democrats as well as Republicans Tuesday on the Pentagon's long-range spending plans. The former worried and the latter flatly charged that at current funding levels the Clinton administration can't meet its goal of maintaining an ability to fight two simultaneous major regional wars.
``We're overcommitted and underfunded,'' said Sen. William S. Cohen, R-Maine.
``The figures just flat don't add up,'' agreed Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio.
But Deutch insisted that the Pentagon's investment in high-tech weaponry during the 1980s has given it an ability to fight two simultaneous wars despite the substantial cuts in manpower made by Republican and Democratic administrations since the end of the Cold War.
Those weapons have improved so dramatically, he said, that in a repeat of the Persian Gulf war, American forces could achieve the same kind of decisive victory won in 1991 with far fewer than the 500,000 troops needed then.
Several committee members noted that advanced successors to some of those sophisticated weapons have been identified by Deutch as possible targets of further budget cutting. The Pentagon has announced that a number of planned weapons systems may be delayed or shelved to free up money for military pay raises and improved benefits.
Deutch acknowledged that placing pay and benefits above procurement now would increase the military's need for new hardware in the future. But he said the administration believes a better quality of life is vital to keeping troops combat-ready and so deserves a larger chunk of the limited funds available.
KEYWORDS: HAITI by CNB