Bringing The Pentagon to Heel

To understand American defense, think of an extremely wealthy man who has gone to a gambling casino for a long binge, gotten hopelessly drunk, wasted a great deal of his money and awakened with a severe hangover to find that he has married a woman who is a complete stranger. The man's condition is scarcely fatal, but scarcely one to be desired.

-- Defense Analyst Anthony Cordesman

That is a rare, fancy metaphor that can be backed up by hard numbers. The Pentagon has indeed been on a long binge: in the eight years of the Reagan Administration, Congress will have handed it $2.2 trillion -- trillion! A good deal of that has been dribbled away in heedless, indiscriminate spending. Now the bills are coming due -- literally, in the case of a number of supersophisticated weapons systems nearing production. Meanwhile, the Defense Department has been forced by the overall federal budget squeeze to embrace a decidedly unfamiliar, and in its eyes hideous, new bride: austerity.

Which makes Secretary of Defense Frank Charles Carlucci III the man on the spot -- and, simultaneously and somewhat surprisingly, the only rising star in the twilight of the Reagan Administration. Carlucci, 57, was appointed last fall to what looked like a caretaker's post, to pad out what was already the longest resume in Washington (positions in seven different agencies -- "one ahead of Elliot Richardson," he jokes). But acting like a caretaker is not in the nature of Carlucci, a far from faceless bureaucrat who boasts that in all his jobs "I don't think anybody has accused me of not having my say." Notably small in stature (around 5 ft. 5 in.), he compensates with aggressiveness and a reputation for wearing down opponents, on the tennis court or in the corridors of power, by sheer tenacity.

Carlucci also has his adaptable and diplomatic side. As Secretary of Defense, he has drained away most of the poison that his predecessor, Caspar Weinberger, left behind in the Pentagon's relations with Congress and the State Department, largely by the simple expedient of respecting their turfs and their opinions. Coming from the National Security Adviser's job, he has retained a major role in foreign policy. In the past month he has turned up all over the globe: chatting with top Soviet defense officials at the Moscow summit; visiting Tokyo, where he urged Japan to share more of the costs of maintaining U.S. bases; promising South Korean leaders last week to beef up U.S. forces to guard against any disruption of the Olympic Games.

But it is in how he deals with the budget squeeze on the Pentagon that Carlucci may make his influence felt beyond the final year of the Reagan Administration. His opening cost-cutting moves have by no means been adequate to the size of the problem. Nonetheless, they have won him bipartisan respect. Says Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee: "He inherited a nightmare at the Defense Department, and he has shown exemplary leadership by turning it into merely a bad dream. He gets absolutely the highest marks."