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Subject: Security Issues Loom on the Horizon; President-Elect May Be Diverted From
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 92 08:40:52 EST
Message-ID: <6.1992Nov7.084053@AmeriCast.com>

Security Issues Loom on the Horizon; President-Elect May Be
Diverted From Emphasis on Economy<By Barton Gellman=Washington
Post Staff Writer= President-elect Clinton, who vowed this week
to "focus like a laser beam on this economy," faces a formidable
if little-noted agenda of national security problems that his
advisers expect will divert him from his desired emphasis on
domestic renewal.

Though convinced that a successful presidency requires concentra-
tion on a short list of priorities, Clinton's loose-knit team of
defense advisers anticipates "forcing events" that will place
early demands on the new administration's political and financial
resources.

"I don't think you have the luxury of saying the first year is
domestic policy," said a senior foreign policy adviser who in-
sisted on anonymity. "There are externalities here. The world has
a funny way of intruding into our lives." Well within his first
100 days, Clinton will have to mount a vigorous campaign for his
position on the first military budget in three years that does
not start with a pre-negotiated agreement on overall spending.
Clinton campaigned on a platform of modest cuts, but the expira-
tion of "budget walls" that have prevented transfers from defense
to domestic spending may release pent-up political pressures for
much larger changes.

There are also immediate statutory deadlines intended to force
debate on women in combat, the closing of unneeded bases and the
division of money and turf among the military services. A con-
tinuing stream of courts-martial and administrative expulsions
will bring pressure on Clinton to fulfill his campaign promise to
end a ban on gay people in uniform.

Additionally, any number of international crises - in the Bal-
kans, Iraq, Iran, Russia, China or Korea - could demand the scar-
cest resource of all: the president's personal attention.

Each one of these questions, advisers say, will breed disputes
not only among the services and in Congress but within Clinton's
policy circles. Interviews in recent weeks suggest unresolved
conflicts and differences of emphasis between the president-
elect's economic and national security advisers and in the emerg-
ing national security team itself.

"On the use of force, the latent fissures are not apparent now
because we have not reached any occasion where they'll rise to
the surface," said one defense adviser, who asked that his name
be withheld. "On spending, the crunch will come from some of his
economic advisers, looking for a way to finance his economic
agenda."

Two overseas venues - Iraq and the warring states of the former
Yugoslav federation - seem especially likely to present Clinton
with early tests, in the view of some advisers.

A ranking White House official said the Bush adminstration has
conveyed to Clinton its belief that Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein "will challenge early on" the new president's mettle, ad-
ding, "They better be prepared for it."

That concern, aides said, led Clinton to devote a large part of
his first formal statement as president-elect on Wednesday to
foreign policy, with a thinly veiled warning that "the greatest
mistake any adversary could make would be to doubt America's
resolve during this period of transition."

Rep. Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.), one of Clinton's closest defense
advisers, said in an interview this week that Saddam could be the
new administration's equivalent of "Ronald Reagan's PATCO," the
air traffic controller's union that Reagan crushed in the first
days of his presidency.  "Unless Saddam Hussein wants to be made
another example, I think he ought to be very cautious," McCurdy
said.

In the Balkans, Clinton already has raised expectations of action
with a campaign strategy that defused doubts about his suitabili-
ty as commander-in-chief in part by striking a more intervention-
ist posture than President Bush.

Walter Slocombe, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy in
the Carter administration who has advised Clinton, sees the Bal-
kan crisis as "potentially providing a forcing event" for the new
president. "I am not at all happy about passive acquiescence in
the creation of a Greater Serbia by military force," Slocombe
said.

Slocombe expressed support for "shifting the advantage to the
Bosnians" by lifting the current U.N. arms embargo. In reference
to a rejected NATO contingency plan to intervene with 110,000
troops to protect relief supplies, he said, "I do not in princi-
ple see why that's unacceptable."

Other Clinton advisers take a somewhat less-militant line, with
one arguing that the principal objective in the Balkans is "to
try to stop the fighting and provide the humanitarian relief
needed to enable people to return to their homes."

In the Defense Department, two potentially traumatic proposals
for social change will be laid at Clinton's doorstep the first
day he arrives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.  Either one of them -
opening combat positions to women or accepting acknowledged
homosexuals in the armed services - would be as profound a shock
to the culture of U.S. fighting forces as the integration of
blacks in 1948 and the creation of an all-volunteer force in
1973. Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney, in the view of many
experts, has ducked both issues for fear of further roiling con-
servative institutions that already face radical changes in their
budgets and operating environments.

During the campaign, Clinton deferred comment on women in combat,
saying he would await the results of a presidential commission.
But on the day Clinton was elected, that commission, dominated by
social conservatives appointed by Bush, came down squarely
against nearly every proposal to expand women's roles.

Deadlines set by Congress 18 months ago, in a deliberate effort
to put the question on the next president's agenda, will send the
commission's report to Congress Dec. 15.  The 48-year-old ban on
gay people expels an average of three servicemen and women a day
from the armed services. Clinton promised to end the ban, but one
senior adviser, expecting an outcry from the services, said the
question of "how that would be implemented, over what time frame,
is not decided."

"Why do that as your first step and cause turmoil?" said another
adviser who has met with Clinton on defense issues.

But Greg King of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, a gay rights
lobby group, said that "to delay on changing the policy would
create political pressures on the part of people who rely on
presidential candidates to keep their promises."

Later this month, meanwhile, the Pentagon's Joint Staff will is-
sue a much-awaited study of "roles and missions," military short-
hand for the division of jobs, forces and budgets among the mili-
tary services. The Air Force, for example, is bidding to take the
Army's air defense and the Navy's deep-bombing missions.

Clinton, echoing Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam
Nunn (D-Ga.), has called for a major purge of redundant forces,
and his advisers are split on whether he can afford to defer im-
mediate action. Roles and missions are not scheduled for review
again for two years.

"When the services wake up and realize they are in for fundamen-
tal changes," one aide said, "they'll mobilize their congression-
al allies and it'll be tough. There's going to be tremendous
gnashing and wailing."<02:07 11-07C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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