he recent eruption of gays in the military as a campaign issue served at least one useful purpose, prompting candidates to reflect -- sometimes revealingly -- on the proper relationship between the commander in chief and his senior military advisers.
But the pronouncements, clarifications, and retractions that ensued make a poor substitute for a full-scale airing of the challenges facing the United States as the world's sole military superpower. Out on the hustings, national security remains missing in action.
As a security issue per se, gays in the military is of trivial significance. Defenders of traditional military culture who worry that erotic tension and sexual relationships between soldiers will spell the demise of unit cohesion and undermine combat effectiveness are about 20 years too late.
On that score, women -- comprising a steadily increasing proportion of the force (currently 15 percent) and assuming a widening array of responsibilities -- have had an infinitely larger impact than would a relative handful of homosexuals.
Whether for good or ill, the battle to preserve the military as a bastion of masculinity and old-fashioned martial virtues is already lost.
On the stump, the issue of gays in the military resonates less because homosexuals threaten combat effectiveness than because sexual orientation remains a contentious front in the ongoing culture war. In that conflict, aspirants to the presidency are eager to signal where they stand. In the meantime, other issues that do bear directly on national security suffer neglect.
Here are three examples of topics that ought to figure in the campaign but that the candidates have largely slighted.
First is that hardy perennial: ''How much is enough?'' In a recent speech, Samuel R. Berger, White House national security adviser, remarked offhandedly that US ''military expenditures now are larger than all other countries combined.'' Yet despite this astonishing acknowledgement - and despite the fact that most other major military powers are US allies - a growing consensus in Washington favors spending more still.
Certainly the Joint Chiefs of Staff complain of underfunding: Units, they report, are unready; modernization lags due to insufficient resources. Thus cued, Republicans happily lambaste the Clinton administration for gutting defense and call for budget increases. For his part, even President Clinton of late has portrayed himself as an advocate of higher defense spending. The political establishment is pretty much agreed: $280 billion per year just won't suffice.
But in the absence of a ''peer competitor'' - a threat comparable to that formerly posed by the Soviet Union - how much is enough? Were its budget to double what the rest of the world spends, would the Pentagon then rest easy? Would outspending the rest of the world on defense henceforth remain an essential and permanent feature of American policy?
Second, who will serve? Flush with prosperity, the United States can, in fact, boost defense outlays by another $50 billion or even $100 billion annually without batting an eyelash. In an $8.5 trillion economy, that's pocket change. The Pentagon's larger problem is finding young Americans willing and able to crew the ships, tanks, and aircraft in its arsenal. With the nation's population now topping 270 million, inducing 200,000 volunteers per year to enlist has become an even more daunting task. In 1999 only the Marine Corps of the four services met its recruiting goals without compromising its standards, this despite the Department of Defense devoting $1.8 billion to the effort.
The generals are betting that this year improved pay and benefits, more advertising, and snappier slogans will make a difference. But is the problem one of blandishments and marketing or is it popular ambivalence about the military's expansive post-Cold War role combined with waning appreciation for the obligations entailed by citizenship? The much-discussed US aversion to casualties may or may not endanger the effectiveness of America's high-tech military. An aversion to service surely would.
Third, has ''peace'' become an illusion? Having prevailed in the Cold War, Americans understandably take satisfaction from the evidence that democracy and free market values are everywhere on the march. How is it, then, that the United States has as a consequence become less secure? Dire warnings about a ''biological Pearl Harbor'' that kills thousands without warning, of surprise nuclear assault by pariah states, and of cyber-attacks that bring the economy to its knees have become staples of rhetoric issuing from the White House and the Defense Department. The end-of-millennium jitters about bomb makers infiltrating from Canada provided only the most recent example.
Such ''forces of destruction,'' according to the Clinton administration, feed on the openness that US foreign policy fosters. Globalization - a precondition, we are told, of continued prosperity - turns out to have an underside that its boosters have neglected to mention, rendering the United States vulnerable to dangerous new threats.
Presidential hopefuls in both parties are equally guilty of ignoring thse issues, preferring instead to posture on gays in the military. Their willingness to do so testifies to the impoverished state of political debate. Worse, it can hardly bode well for Amerian security in the decade ahead.
Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of international relations at Boston University.
