Defense spending seems immune from serious cuts, even in a time of budget-balancing. In part, this is because support for the military is based on economic, not military, choices, and reflects Congress members' desire to keep funds flowing into their districts. This desire is so strong that the $250 billion defense budget -- half of all spending that Congress controls -- has been "off the table" in budget negotiations for several years. PNS commentator Sanford Gottlieb is author of "Defense Addiction: Can America Kick the Habit?" published by Westview Press, and has worked for over 30 years for private organizations in the field of international arms control.

With the release of its Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon has once again shown its mastery of political engineering. With their partners in the defense industry and Congress, top Defense Department officials in the five-sided building on the Potomac have preserved the formula for spending $250 billion a year until 2002.

The baseline of this formula is the assumption that the United States must prepare to fight two regional wars -- one in the Middle East, one in Korea -- simultaneously and without allies. This assumption first surfaced in the Pentagon's 1993 Bottom-up Review and has not been seriously challenged since.

It should be challenged. With the disappearance of the massed land armies of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet missiles, defense planners have chosen Iraq, despite its defeated and hobbled regime, and the isolated communist state of North Korea as our new demons. Even if one agrees that North Korea will invade the South, why assume US forces would have to fight without allies? What would the Koreans do, watch?

No one in Congress raised this question. Bipartisan majorities were too intent on keeping defense contracts and military bases in their districts to be bothered, and President Clinton -- perhaps because of his draft evasion during the Vietnam War and the flap over gays in the military -- did not oppose the brass.

The two-regional-war strategy permits the Defense Department to downsize modestly and still benefit from Cold War-level budgets. Defense outlays have come down only fifteen percent since the end of the Cold War in 1990, although they have dropped by a third from the stratospheric heights reached during the Reagan administration. This still leaves us spending almost twice as much on defense as the other 15 members of NATO combined.

The new Quadrennial Review proposes no change in strategy to reflect changes in the world. It makes minor cuts in personnel, force strength and military bases. Yet even these will be opposed in Congress -- particularly the base closings. Earlier closings worked only by establishing a bipartisan commission and requiring it to recommend a list that had to be voted up or down by Congress as a whole. The term of the commission has expired, however, and it is doubtful that Congress will authorize another one.

The mind set that helps preserve the status quo was best explained to me in 1994 by then Senator David Pryor (D-Ark). "It's about jobs. I wish we would call it a jobs program instead of defense. We've been at it for 40 or 50 years. It's a huge spigot that's been flowing too long."

The Cold War ended at a time of global recession and high unemployment. With no federal plans for transition to a fully peacetime economy, members of Congress tried to hold onto defense work in their areas -- with the strong backing of local defense subcontractors. The prime contractor for the B-2 bomber, for example, was supplied by subcontractors in 48 states and all of these could be mobilized politically to keep the contracts coming.

The B-2, which was designed to drop H-bombs on the USSR, became instead the spearhead of a raid on the Treasury in 1994 when B-2 builders Northrop and Grumman and Congressional allies, especially from California and Washington state, tried to persuade Congress to buy 20 planes more than the Pentagon requested.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif), extolling the virtues of the B-2 on the Senate floor, assured her colleagues "it can deliver a large payroll." "Payload," she doubtless meant to say. But the slip revealed what was surely uppermost in Feinstein's mind during a tough reelection contest: Jobs for her constituents.

The employment scene has improved, but members of Congress continue to look to the military as the primary source of government-generated jobs.

Ironically, defense workers have been the principal victims of the cuts as some 800,000 defense industry jobs vanished between 1990 and mid-1995. At the same time, stock prices of big defense contractors swelled, particularly as these firms merged to form larger conglomerates.

Spending is also pushed by pure military pork-barreling by Congress. In the past two years, the Republican majority has given the Pentagon $17 billion it didn't ask for.

Military decisions should be made for military, not economic, reasons, based on hard-headed assessment and public discussion that weighs the needs of society as a whole. When he was reelected speaker Newt Gingrich said, "Just because something is in uniform doesn't mean it has to be saluted. . . . we should be getting every penny for our taxpayers." That won't happen until the taxpayers talk up.