Leslie Aspin Jr. (July 21, 1938 – May 21, 1995) was an American Democratic Party politician and economist who served as the U.S. representative for Wisconsin's 1st congressional district from 1971 to 1993 and as the 18th United States Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1994.

As Secretary of Defense, Aspin faced complex social issues, such as the roles of homosexuals in uniform, and of women in combat, as well as major decisions regarding the use of military force in Somalia, Bosnia, and Haiti.

[2] He attended Yale University, where he was admitted to the Zeta Psi fraternity, and graduated summa cum laude in 1960 with a Bachelor of Arts in history.

In 1973, he criticized the Air Force for devising a plan to purchase 200 beagle puppies, tie the dogs' vocal cords, and conduct tests of poisonous gases.

[15] He again broke with many Democrats in January 1991 when he issued a paper supporting the Bush administration's intention to use military force to drive the Iraqis from Kuwait.

[18][19] "Shortly after he took office, Aspin discussed dangers that had emerged with the end of the Cold War: the uncertainty that reform could succeed in the former Soviet Union; the enhanced possibility that terrorists or terrorist states could acquire nuclear weapons; the likely proliferation of regional conflicts; and the failure to take adequate account of the impact of the state of the domestic economy on U.S. national security interests.

The budget process proved more complicated than usual, owing to Clinton's campaign pledge to reduce DoD funding and to a "bottom-up review" of the military structure ordered by Aspin shortly after he took office.

A Pentagon steering group chaired by Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition and Technology) John M. Deutch and including representatives from various OSD offices, the Joint Staff, and the services conducted the review.

The bottom-up review report, which Aspin released in September 1993,[22] took into account strategy formulation, force structure, weapon systems modernization, and Defense infrastructure.

The report also called for additional prepositioned equipment and airlift/sealift capacity, improved anti-armor and precision-guided munitions, and enhanced Army National Guard combat brigade readiness.

In the fall of 1993 Aspin began to tell the White House that the five-year Defense budget, reflecting the results of the bottom-up review, would exceed the more than $1 trillion projected by the Clinton administration.

In December 1993 he put the anticipated shortfall at no less than $50 billion, the consequence of inaccurate inflation estimates, a military pay raise, and failure to account for other Pentagon costs, including peacekeeping operations.

Furthermore, Aspin was on record as favoring the use of U.S. troops in regional conflicts, as opposed to other decisionmakers, including General Colin Powell, chairman of the JCS.

In March 1993 he released a plan to close an additional 31 large military installations and to shrink or consolidate 134 other sites, projecting a savings of over $3 billion a year beginning in 2000.

While seeking solutions to the complex budget and force structure issues, Aspin found himself beset with difficult regional problems and conflicts that demanded decisions and action.

At a meeting in Brussels in December 1993 the NATO defense ministers agreed to consider for future alliance membership those non-NATO nations that participated in the program.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin warned that attempts to bring Eastern European nations into NATO would threaten his country's strategic interests and endanger hopes for the former Soviet bloc's reconciliation with the West.

In October, in an effort Clinton approved even though Aspin opposed it, the United States sent the USS Harlan County carrying 200 troops to Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital.

Some observers attacked Aspin for not taking a harder stand in the administration against an action he opposed and then aborting the effort in the face of local opposition.

In June 1993 two U.S. Navy ships fired Tomahawk missiles against the headquarters building of Iraq's intelligence service in Baghdad in response to evidence of a plot to assassinate former President Bush during a visit to Kuwait.

Two months later Aspin received a report on the U.S. military performance during the 1991 Gulf War, the result of a study undertaken by the House Armed Services Committee when he chaired it.

The report concluded that the U.S. Central Command had greatly exaggerated damage done to Iraqi military equipment, such as tanks and naval vessels, by air strikes.

Aspin did not favor using ground forces to intervene in the civil war involving the Bosnian Muslims, Serbs, and Croats, but thought that the use of sophisticated weapons was a more reasonable option.

In December 1992, shortly before Aspin became secretary of defense, the United States joined a new Unified Task Force (UNITAF) to provide security as well as food relief.

In March 1993, United Nations Operation in Somalia II began in an effort to create conditions to enable the Somalis to rebuild the country.

In September 1993, General Powell asked Aspin to approve the request of the U.S. commander in Somalia for tanks, armored vehicles and AC-130 Spectre gunships for his forces.

At some point during a lunch meeting, Powell presented to Aspin on the need of additional tanks, armored vehicles, AC-130 Spectre gunships air-support to support the U.S.

The president publicly defended Aspin but made clear that the White House was not involved in the decision not to send armor reinforcements to Somalia.

One news magazine stated that Aspin's major handicap was "neither his famously unmilitary bearing nor his inability to discipline himself or the enormous Pentagon bureaucracy; it is his politician's instinct for the middle ground on defense issues."