Good to hear that Secretary of Defense Bob Gates realizes the army is still too small. Despite a modest and belated increase in its forces’ size authorized by his predecessor, the army still has just 547,000 active-duty personnel — far below its strength of 710,000 at the end of the Cold War in 1991. Now Gates has said he will add another 22,000 troops “temporarily,” although it will take time to implement that increase. It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s still not enough. The army has more to do now than it did in 1991. Shouldn’t it have at least as many troops?
One of the biggest mistakes George W. Bush made was to not increase the size of the armed forces in 2001, when it would have been relatively easy to do so. Instead, he subscribed to the fantasy propagated by some “transformation” advocates that in modern warfare, troops were now of marginal importance. The last few years in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown the costs of not having enough boots on the ground. But despite the troop surges in both countries, we still need more in Afghanistan beyond the current reinforcements, which will bring the total U.S. strength to 68,000.
But it’s hard to send more to Afghanistan when we still have 130,000 troops in Iraq — and they too are performing a valuable function. Then there are the requirements for having substantial troops available to deter potential adversaries like North Korea, to train friendly forces around the world, to hunt down terrorists, to prepare for major potential disasters in the United States and abroad — and a million other missions. Plus army leaders understandably want to increase “dwell time,” i.e., the length of time between deployments, so as to lessen stress on the force and to prevent an exodus of experienced soldiers (which has long been predicted but thankfully hasn’t happened yet).
Requirements for U.S. troops are not going to decrease anytime soon. Those who believe that the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq represent “aberrations,” undertaken by a trigger-happy president — mistakes that won’t be repeated anytime soon — are living a fantasy. U.S. troops have been on a punishing deployment schedule ever since the end of the Cold War. No one knows where the next battles will be fought. (Who could have predicted on September 10, 2001, that they would now be fighting in Afghanistan of all places?) The only thing we know for sure is that there will be more battles and that we need more troops to be ready.
Having a larger force at hand prepared to fight is the surest guarantee that we won’t have to. If we look overstretched — as we do today — our enemies are more likely to challenge us. Having too few troops doesn’t mean they won’t be deployed. It means they will be deployed too often and at too great a risk.
