Posted on: Monday, April 8, 2002

EDITORIAL
Command shift can harm U.S. interests

Call it a warning shot from the two senior lions on the U.S. Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee.

Hawai'i Sen. Dan Inouye and Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, the ranking majority and minority member on this key committee, held a showpiece "hearing" in Honolulu last week to raise alarms about a new Pentagon proposal to shift command over several military units from Hawai'i to the Mainland.

Simple hometown protectionism, you say? Not necessarily.

The Pentagon proposal is part of a larger effort to create a new unified military command as part of the new homeland defense initiative. To that end, the Pentagon proposes that several major West Coast military units would report to the new East Coast-based command rather than to the Pacific Command here.

The units would include the San Diego-based Third Fleet, the First Marine Expeditionary Force out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., and the Army's I Corps from Fort Lewis, Wash.

Inouye and Stevens charged that the transfer of command makes little sense and would weaken the United States' position in Asia.

To the degree that this is nothing more than a change of command authority, there might be little to worry about. But the transfer of leadership signals a subtle, but potentially serious, change of mission and responsibility for the units.

Today, their focus is on Asia and the Pacific. That is where they train. That is where they have built strong working relationships with other military forces in the region. And that is where they know they will go if there is trouble.

If these units report to the new homeland command, inevitably they will be asked to spend time training and focusing on homeland security in ways that would turn them away from Asia.

Not only would this undermine an existing and important mission, it would signal — perhaps unfairly, but signal nonetheless — our allies in Asia that we are losing interest in their part of the world.

That would be a dangerous move.

It may be that Inouye and Stevens have more parochial interests, in that they are less worried about the West Coast than they are about other units stationed, and spending money, in Hawai'i and Alaska. Under that scenario, this hearing was about drawing a bright line in the sand.

Even if that's the case, the larger point remains valid. Yes, the war on terrorism is vital, and homeland security is a crucial part of that.

But our security also depends on a stable Asia. Our strong military presence in the region is one of the major reasons Asia has been relatively stable, secure and increasingly prosperous over the past several decades.

It makes little sense to threaten that region-wide sense of security by suggesting that our interests have turned elsewhere.