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Next president faces new and complex tests abroad

BY MARTIN C. EVANS | martin.evans@newsday.com

October 26, 2008

Whoever wins the White House will inherit simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at a time when the United States faces new and complex challenges from abroad - global terrorism, nuclear proliferation, enemy doubts about American resolve and growing unease among U.S. allies who question America's reliance on military might and its motivation for intervention.

The next president will become commander in chief of a military whose troops face exhaustion after multiple tours of combat duty, and whose helicopters, trucks, weapons and general supplies are being depleted after seven years of war.

Nearly three decades after President Jimmy Carter began helping local tribesmen drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan - which hastened the demise of the Soviet empire - America's next president faces the prospect of the United States itself becoming mired in that southwest Asian country.

He will do so as the U.S. economy teeters toward its worst position since the Great Depression, challenging his ability to use the U.S. Treasury to bolster U.S. military might.

"In a word, the next president faces a gigantic mess," said Winslow Wheeler, of the Center for Defense Information, a Washington think tank. "The financial meltdown and the economic recession makes it obvious to everyone except the Pentagon that the unlimited resources we've been able to throw at military problems is over."

Democrat Barack Obama has promised to impose a year 2010 deadline to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, and says rival John McCain's early support for the war - Obama opposed sending troops to Iraq while he was still in the Illinois legislature - helped make the case for U.S. involvement.

Obama says the war in Iraq has distracted America from its mission of capturing terror leader Osama bin Laden. He said by sending troops to Iraq, President George W. Bush tied up forces that could be better directed at preventing Afghanistan - whose former Taliban leaders hosted bin Laden as he plotted the 9/11 attacks - from falling back into the hands of resurgent guerrilla forces.

McCain insists that our forces must remain in Iraq until the United States can claim victory there, regardless of a timeline. He says his early support for a troop surge, which President Bush eventually imposed last year, has moved America closer to that goal because it resulted in a decrease in violence in Iraq.

Both candidates promise to increase the size of the military, according to their Web sites.

But military analysts say the cost of war in Iraq and Afghanistan will burden the U.S. budget for a generation because it is being paid for with borrowed money. They add that with many of the 1.7 million troops who have served there returning with physical and psychological wounds that will merit a lifetime of care and disability payments, costs born by the already overburdened Department of Veterans Affairs will skyrocket.

"This idea that once we withdraw we won't have to spend more money on Iraq is unfortunately not realistic," said professor Linda Bilmes, a Harvard economist and co-author of "The Three Trillion Dollar War." "We will continue to be spending money for this war for decades."

THE CANDIDATES

Here's a snapshot of the war issues that John McCain and Barack Obama consider most important, and how they'd deal with them

McCAIN

SIZE OF MILITARY.

McCain wants to expand the size of the U.S. military by 200,000 personnel.

MISSILE SYSTEMS. Places greater stock in building a missile defense system, saying North Korea, Iran and even Russia and China pose a threat to U.S. security. McCain favors placing a missile shield in Europe, a proposal that has angered Russia.

USE OF MILITARY POWER. Favors a more robust use of military power to advance American interests and to spread democracy abroad. Last year, he said he would be prepared to use military force to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons.

RUSSIA. McCain takes a harder line against America's former Cold War foe, saying Russia should be expelled from the G-8 group of nations for its August invasion of Georgia, and calling Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin "a totalitarian dictator." McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, said she favors including Georgia in NATO, and would go to war if Russia subsequently invaded that country.

ISRAEL. Both Obama and McCain have expressed unswerving support for the State of Israel.