ABSTRACT
In contrast Bill Clinton made himself the messenger of "change," pledging a strategy to meet the new challenges to the nation's security. The original Clinton numbers were derived more from the threat of Senate Armed Services Chair Sam Nunn than North Korean strongman Kim II Sung. As a candidate for president, Clinton called upon the nation to seize the possibilities posed by the end of the Cold War. In the fall, Defense Secretary Les Aspin completed his "Bottom Up Review" of the US defense posture. Headlines broadcast the Labor Department announcement that an estimated 2 million defense-related jobs would be lost from 1987 to 1997. Economists noted that the loss of defense jobs was slowing the recovery. The notion that a president would seek and gain public and congressional support for fighting a second Desert Storm on the other side of the world, with US security only remotely threatened, is a planner's mad fantasy.
