Cohen: Keep Two-War Strategy

Defense Secretary William Cohen defended the Pentagon's belief that it must maintain a force capable of fighting and winning two major wars at the same time after an independent panel recommended dropping the strategy.

In a Dec. 15 letter to Congress responding to the recent report of the National Defense Panel, Cohen said he agreed with many of the report's recommendations. But he disagreed with the panel's call to change the Pentagon's core military paradigm.

"I believe that maintaining a capability, in concert with our allies, to fight and win two major theater wars in overlapping time frames remains central to credibly deterring opportunism and aggression" on the Korean Peninsula and in the Middle East, Cohen said. The panel, in its Dec. 1 report, said the two-war strategy had become a "force-protection mechanism--a means of justifying the current force structure."

While Cohen said he agreed with many of the other recommendations the panel made, including revamping business practices in the department, he did not commit to speeding up the process of opening up infrastructure activities to competition. Cohen also shied away from accelerating the department's reform of military affairs.

"In the face of very real near-term demands to protect U.S. interests and within the constraints of available resources, we must pursue this transformation prudently," Cohen said.