COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

The notion that we need to move now to increase active duty troop levels appears to be rapidly gaining momentum. Michael O'Hanlon is now advocating that in the latest issue of Parameters, which is a military professional journal.

After criticizing the Clinton Administration for overdeploying and overusing the US military in the 1990s, the Bush Administration is now doing exactly the same thing—except on a much larger scale. Having made the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and having badly underestimated the difficulty as well as the force requirements of accomplishing the post-Saddam stabilization effort successfully, the Bush Administration or its successor now needs to get serious about making ends match means. At present, the latter are insufficient.

Deployment demands are likely to remain great, even if Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush hope otherwise. Foreign coalition partners in Iraq continue to provide about 25,000 troops, but that number is not trending upward. That makes it likely that US troop strength there will have to remain substantial for a long time to come. Indeed, the US military is preparing for the possibility that its current strength in Iraq of just over 140,000 may have to remain at that level for years. The history of recent stabilization missions suggests that even a favorable scenario might see the number decline to about 100,000 in 2005, 75,000 in 2006, 50,000 or so in 2007-08, and perhaps half that latter number for a period thereafter.3 It is entirely possible that these estimates could prove wrong—and even that the United States could be asked to leave Iraq rather suddenly in the coming year or two. But planners cannot assume such an outcome.

As a result, the typical active-duty US soldier in a deployable unit could literally spend the majority of the next three to four years abroad. In 2004 alone, even before the problems in Iraq in the spring led to an increase in planned force levels there, 26 of the Army’s 33 main combat brigades in the active force were to deploy abroad at some point during the year. Over the course of 2003 and 2004 together, virtually all of the 33 brigades will have been deployed.

O'Hanlon points out that tens of thousands of reservists have already been involuntarily mobilized twice or more since 2001, and all of the National Guard's enhanced infantry brigades will have been deployed by the end of 2006. (Which tells me that my own brigade will come up on the hook by 2007. So the Guard rotation is going to be one year in every four four years, not every five, unless troop strength comes up or our obligations abroad ratchet down radically in that time.

Military Police and other units have already taken it on the chin.

O'Hanlon supports reaching out to France and Germany for more troops (fat chance!) and even ceding some decision making authority to the UN in exchange for more assistance from other countries.

Most importantly, though, O'Hanlon comes out for increasing our troop end strength by 40,000 active duty troops in addition to the 20,000 already surging through the system under emergency powers authorization.

Despite all the above laudable and promising initiatives, the Army— and perhaps the Marine Corps as well, but particularly the Army—needs an immediate increase in active-duty troop levels. In fact, the decision is overdue. At the latest, it should have been made as soon as it became obvious in mid-2003 that the post-Saddam Iraq stabilization mission would be difficult and long. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it would take five years to fully train and recruit an additional 80,000 troops. (That would be enough for two divisions plus associated support. It would have an annual cost of about $6.5 billion just to maintain the needed forces stateside—not counting marginal occupation-related costs or up-front investment costs, the latter estimated at just shy of $20 billion.10) Even if CBO’s methodology is too cautious, assuming a business-as-usual approach to recruiting and retention at a time when accelerated measures are called for, and even if it might take only half as long to add 40,000 troops, the time to act is now.

The whole thing is a worthwhile read.

Also, and I can't recommend it highly enough, find a copy of "The Minuteman: Restoring an Army of the People," by Senator Gary Hart. He is actually one of the better thinkers on military policy and structure we have.



Bonus: If you purchase the book through Countercolumn, I get a dollar. And you still get a great book! What a country!

Splash, out

Jason