Michael O’Hanlon
February 25, 2014
The Pentagon plans to scale back to 450,000 soldiers. Going beyond that is not wise.
Reduction to 450,000 active-duty Army would be lowest since WWII.
Today, all the military buzz is about drones, cyber, space, SEALs, and long-range strike systems.
A look at future possible future missions both big and small suggests we would have enough troops.
The Pentagon's new strategy calls for an active-duty Army of 450,000 soldiers — the fewest number of full-time soldiers since before World War II.
That would be just 10% less than the average since the mid-1990s to halfway through the Bush years — not a huge change. Marines and Army Guardsmen and Reservists would be cut slightly less, in percentage terms.
Even so, how much is enough? Since 1992, the U.S. has based its planning for ground forces around the possibility of fighting two large regional wars at once. We thought they'd be Iraq and North Korea. They turned out to be Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, Saddam Hussein is gone, Iraq is violent but not looking to invade anybody and all the military buzz is about drones, cyberspace, SEALs and long-range strike systems. And the Pentagon, since 2012, has declared the end of any interest in large-scale counterinsurgency and stabilization missions. Most Americans, chastened and fatigued by the Iraq and Afghanistan experiences, might happily go along with this new way of thinking.
But let's be careful not to push this logic too far. If the budget cuts known assequestration kick back in by 2016, as current law requires, the Pentagon may cut the active Army to 400,000 or below. A former chief of naval operations recently proposed cutting it below 300,000. These ideas would not be wise.
Limits to cuts
The Army, together with the Marine Corps and other elements of our military, still needs to continue to deter conflict against North Korea — a nation now armed with perhaps 10 nuclear bombs, led by a leader who just had his uncle executed on trumped-up charges, and backed by millions of indoctrinated soldiers with perfectly serviceable AK-47s and other small arms.
If, heaven forbid, there is another war on the Korean Peninsula, our South Korean allies will need lots of American help to prevent the destruction of Seoul and the possible seepage of nuclear materials onto the international black market, where terrorists could bid for them.
Then there are all the other, smaller, possible missions.
To be sure, we should not let our imaginations run rampant. I am glad nobody was talking about sending U.S. troops to Ukraine during the recent crisis there.
We also need not plan to fight China on the Asian mainland, or go chase drug kingpins with Army forces in Mexican mountains, or occupy Iran or Pakistan to seize their nuclear capabilities. Some missions are just too hard, too dangerous, too peripheral to U.S. interests — or simply undoable.
Unanticipated missions
But there are other missions that could arise. Nobody saw the Bosnia and Kosovomissions coming until the Balkans exploded in violence in the 1990s. Korea was not on our radar screen until 1950; Vietnam barely registered in the early 1960s; Afghanistan was about the least likely place anybody thought we'd send troops until 2001.
Here are some possible missions for the future, even if each is unlikely:
An international implementation force to uphold any deal the belligerents in Syria might ultimately accept.
U.S. battalions or brigades of up to a few thousand troops per country to shore up our Persian Gulf allies after a possible military strike to eliminate Iran's nuclear facilities (if talks fail), followed by a prolonged period of low-intensity conflict with Iran.
A peacekeeping mission to secure and stabilize Kashmir if disputes over that province lead India and Pakistan to their fifth war — and the prospect of their first nuclear war.
An implementation force for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
None of these scenarios is likely to happen, but as noted, we tend to wind up in one or two such missions at a time over any given decade. Planning for one big war — such as Korea — to shore up deterrence, while having the capacity to help backstop two multinational stabilization missions elsewhere, is a reasonable way to plan future U.S. ground forces. We can probably, by my calculations, satisfy that requirement with 450,000 active-duty soldiers.
But not much less.
Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
http://www.usatoday.com/opinion/
February 25, 2014
The Pentagon plans to scale back to 450,000 soldiers. Going beyond that is not wise.
Reduction to 450,000 active-duty Army would be lowest since WWII.Today, all the military buzz is about drones, cyber, space, SEALs, and long-range strike systems.
A look at future possible future missions both big and small suggests we would have enough troops.
The Pentagon's new strategy calls for an active-duty Army of 450,000 soldiers — the fewest number of full-time soldiers since before World War II.
That would be just 10% less than the average since the mid-1990s to halfway through the Bush years — not a huge change. Marines and Army Guardsmen and Reservists would be cut slightly less, in percentage terms.
Even so, how much is enough? Since 1992, the U.S. has based its planning for ground forces around the possibility of fighting two large regional wars at once. We thought they'd be Iraq and North Korea. They turned out to be Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, Saddam Hussein is gone, Iraq is violent but not looking to invade anybody and all the military buzz is about drones, cyberspace, SEALs and long-range strike systems. And the Pentagon, since 2012, has declared the end of any interest in large-scale counterinsurgency and stabilization missions. Most Americans, chastened and fatigued by the Iraq and Afghanistan experiences, might happily go along with this new way of thinking.
But let's be careful not to push this logic too far. If the budget cuts known assequestration kick back in by 2016, as current law requires, the Pentagon may cut the active Army to 400,000 or below. A former chief of naval operations recently proposed cutting it below 300,000. These ideas would not be wise.
Limits to cuts
The Army, together with the Marine Corps and other elements of our military, still needs to continue to deter conflict against North Korea — a nation now armed with perhaps 10 nuclear bombs, led by a leader who just had his uncle executed on trumped-up charges, and backed by millions of indoctrinated soldiers with perfectly serviceable AK-47s and other small arms.
If, heaven forbid, there is another war on the Korean Peninsula, our South Korean allies will need lots of American help to prevent the destruction of Seoul and the possible seepage of nuclear materials onto the international black market, where terrorists could bid for them.
Then there are all the other, smaller, possible missions.
To be sure, we should not let our imaginations run rampant. I am glad nobody was talking about sending U.S. troops to Ukraine during the recent crisis there.
We also need not plan to fight China on the Asian mainland, or go chase drug kingpins with Army forces in Mexican mountains, or occupy Iran or Pakistan to seize their nuclear capabilities. Some missions are just too hard, too dangerous, too peripheral to U.S. interests — or simply undoable.
Unanticipated missions
But there are other missions that could arise. Nobody saw the Bosnia and Kosovomissions coming until the Balkans exploded in violence in the 1990s. Korea was not on our radar screen until 1950; Vietnam barely registered in the early 1960s; Afghanistan was about the least likely place anybody thought we'd send troops until 2001.
Here are some possible missions for the future, even if each is unlikely:
An international implementation force to uphold any deal the belligerents in Syria might ultimately accept.
U.S. battalions or brigades of up to a few thousand troops per country to shore up our Persian Gulf allies after a possible military strike to eliminate Iran's nuclear facilities (if talks fail), followed by a prolonged period of low-intensity conflict with Iran.
A peacekeeping mission to secure and stabilize Kashmir if disputes over that province lead India and Pakistan to their fifth war — and the prospect of their first nuclear war.
An implementation force for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
None of these scenarios is likely to happen, but as noted, we tend to wind up in one or two such missions at a time over any given decade. Planning for one big war — such as Korea — to shore up deterrence, while having the capacity to help backstop two multinational stabilization missions elsewhere, is a reasonable way to plan future U.S. ground forces. We can probably, by my calculations, satisfy that requirement with 450,000 active-duty soldiers.
But not much less.
Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
http://www.usatoday.com/opinion/
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