MILITARY BUDGET IS THREATENING U.S. READINESS

President Clinton has said "the era of big government is over." But so far it looks like it's over for only one area of government: national defense.

The administration is looking for a 6 percent cut in the 1997 defense budget. While that may not seem like much, it will further starve an already hungry armed forces wizened by nearly a decade of consecutive budget cuts.

Some of you may be thinking, "Hey, the Cold War is over. Communists are now nothing more than cabana boys in third-rate, dictator-run countries like Cuba. What could be wrong with a major downsizing of our military?"

The only problem with this line of thinking is that while the magnitude of danger may be less, the volatility of danger is much greater. Rogue nations working to obtain nuclear and chemical weapons don't care if the United States is a superpower. All they care about is bullying their way onto the world stage, and they're getting the weapons to do it.

In recognition of this, the Clinton administration has said the United States needs to be able to fight and win two regional wars simultaneously. Yet the White House has failed to provide the funding that would enable the Pentagon to meet this goal.

In addition to procurement, the Pentagon's operations and maintenance budget is being siphoned off into areas not related to combat readiness. Peacekeeping operations in Bosnia, Haiti, Rwanda and Somalia between 1992 and 1995 have cost American taxpayers some $6.6 billion. None of these missions contributed one iota to U.S. security.

It wasn't too long ago taxpayers were told that Pentagon chiefs favored hammers costing hundreds of dollars and toilet seats that should have been gold-plated for what we paid for them. There was no excuse, of course, for such excess. But essential investments in the day-to-day operations of our fighting men and women -- and combat readiness -- should not be confused with the waste of the past.

President Clinton does the armed forces a disservice when our soldiers and sailors go without essential training because equipment is broken and there are no parts to fix it.

The Clinton administration wouldn't have committed the United States to being able to fight and win two regional wars simultaneously if military planners didn't consider such a scenario -- say in Korea or the Middle East, for example -- a distinct possibility. But if the Pentagon isn't given the training, equipment, spare parts and supplies it needs, it can't fulfill this mission.

Or, our fighting men and women can be thrown into the middle of a conflict without the proper support, and we can just hope for the best. Is this the administration's military strategy?

Edwin Feulner is president of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C., public policy research institute.