Rethinking the military's mission

Rethinking the military's mission

By Gordon Adams
Published February 15, 2006. Copyright by the Chicago Tribune

The Pentagon released its newest strategy ideas recently, and that has prompted the usual questions. Is the Army overstretched? Is it near the breaking point? Does it need to grow?

The answer is not to grow the Army, but to ask, after Iraq, what is the Army's mission.

Right now the Army is overstretched by the requirement of maintaining and recycling nearly 170,000 ground forces in and around Iraq. Soldiers in Iraq have virtually all done one tour there; most have done two; some are on their third. There are not enough active-duty Army troops for this, so virtually all the combat forces in the Army National Guard and Reserve have been called up and have served.

Army recruitment fell nearly 6,700 short of the 80,000-soldier goal for last year, and the Army has lowered the goal for this year. Army reserves fell 16 percent behind their recruiting goal and the National Guard 20 percent. Re-enlistment rates, especially for the reserves and the Guard, are also falling.

Some politicians want more troops--proposals range from 30,000 to 86,000 more. But the new Quadrennial Defense Review says the size of the force is just right; we only need to restructure it to deal with the "long war" on terror.

But just keeping troop levels even is hard right now. While the job benefits and appeals to patriotism draw people to the military, casualty rates and an unpopular war keep them away. The Army would have to increase benefits and pay considerably, beyond the reported $500 million spent on recruitment and retention bonuses in 2005, to get there and probably could not do it.

The problem is the mission, especially Iraq. The defense review doesn't say too much about Iraq, but it reflects the reality that the deployment in Iraq will end. The critics who want to add forces seem to be saying, implicitly, that the U.S. will stay there or, if we leave, that we will be doing many more Iraqs.

We need a show of hands to see how many think the U.S. will keep 170,000 ground troops in and around Iraq, even this year. And another for how many Americans think we are going to do an Iraq--Syria, Iran, Nigeria--any time soon.

If it is "no go" for a future Iraq, then the Pentagon may be right. The Army is the right size and just needs to be restructured into smaller modular units, and with more Special Operations troops better trained to chasing terrorists and fighting what the planners call "irregular warfare."

The critics can't have it both ways--calling for a withdrawal from Iraq and calling for an Army big enough to take unilateral responsibility for post-conflict security, stability, governance and reconstruction again and again. The question for them is: Just exactly what are the future missions for the Army?

The defense review provides clear clues about how the Pentagon feels about this question. It makes a vigorous, if unexpected, argument that the U.S. should not be expected to do war followed by occupation, security and reconstruction--again, anywhere, without substantial burden-sharing by other government agencies (like State), non-governmental organizations, and international organizations like the UN. Moreover, for an administration that alienated its allies over Iraq, the Pentagon is calling for substantial support from friends and allies in any future operation.

The Pentagon still has a lot of missions in mind: combat, deterrence, homeland defense, fighting insurgencies and terrorists and "support for" (an important qualifier) stability, security, transition and reconstruction. But its framework does not require an expansion of the Army. Once out of Iraq, that will not be needed.

If the departure from Iraq is inevitable, and it seems to be, future crises may well look more like Afghanistan--involving unstable countries that can harbor terrorist forces, fostering crises next door. Even this agenda smacks a bit of "globo-cop," but the promise and possibility of allied support is much greater than for a near-unilateral invasion like Iraq.

It is time to get beyond a stale argument about whether we need to add numbers to the Army and more closely examine the range of missions we expect the Army to carry out, and how they fit into a broader reorientation of U.S. national security policy. Bulking up the force, which is physically impossible in any case, raises this question.

It's the mission, stupid, not the shortage of troops. This broader perspective will be badly needed in the coming debate about the Army, U.S. strategy and the Pentagon budget.