Ronald Reagan's campaign platform in 1980, a year when American hostages were held captive in Iran and the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, included a pledge to undertake the "moral and physical rearmament" of the United States. The most striking characteristic of the Reagan budgets, unsurprisingly, has been the steady increase in the portion devoted to defense.

The question of whether we are spending too much or too little on defense cannot be answered within a single frame of reference. The nation might well be spending only a fraction of what the military establishment deems necessary to insure our national security, and still be spending far more than the economy will bear. Any discussion of what amount of spending constitutes "enough" must include at least these two variables.

Critics of the Reagan Administration's defense policy warn that the country cannot expect to maintain what approaches a "wartime" defense industry without experiencing serious consequences in the civilian sector. One frequently mentioned result is the large concentration of scientists and engineers—by some estimates over a third of the nation's total—involved in military research. Another is the reduced government funding available for such social programs as Medicare. According to this view, our military buildup is like a greedy fledgling, eating up all the nation's resources and starving the economy.

On the other hand, it is difficult to assign a dollar value to national security. The defense posture of the United States in recent years has been defined primarily by the vicissitudes of our relationship to the Soviet Union. This is not a book about foreign policy, and even less about arms control; nevertheless, it is necessary when measuring defense dollars to consider the demands placed on the military by our global perspective.

The final word on defense spending rests with Congress. The annual budget process is the unwieldy framework within which the sometimes competing claims of national security and the national economy are weighed and a level of defense expenditure is determined. The extremely wide range of opinion on what constitutes an appropriate level can be gleaned from the debate contained in the following pages. These editorials, drawn from major newspapers throughout the United States, reflect the strong feelings of American journalists about defense. They were chosen merely to present diverse points of view, without any attempt to favor one over another.

November, 1983

Carol C. Collins