[The Rising East]U.S. troops at full stretch
The armed forces of the United States are being stretched so thin that their ability to fulfill U.S. military commitments in Asia and the Pacific is being called into question. The threat, however, is not immediate in Korea, the Taiwan Straits, or in the campaign against terror in Southeast Asia.
Rather, the risk is whether the United States will have the trained forces to meet contingencies that are not now foreseen. The hazard comes from possible eruptions in another part of the world, requiring the United States to dispatch forces that might otherwise have been available in Asia.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, aware of the strain on the troops, have danced around the issue because Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is determined to keep the forces at their present level of 1.4 million - or to cut them to throw off funds to buy more high-tech weapons.
The Congress, however, appears ready to make the size of the force a point of contention when it reconvenes later this month. That and the stress caused by Iraq and other deployments could become a political issue in this election year.
Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, was quoted before the holidays as saying a bipartisan move to increase the size of the force "recognizes the reality in the strain and the stretch in all the services."
Or, as the retiring chief of staff of the Army, General Eric K. Shinseki cautioned in his farewell address in June: "Beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division Army."
The jeopardy comes in five elements:
Not enough people: Today, 300,000 of the 480,000 men and women in the U.S. Army are deployed in 120 countries. Where would the soldiers come from if another Iraq blew up?
Too many missions: The U.S. armed forces have been assigned to fight across the full spectrum of operations, from nuclear war to peacekeeping duties and everything in between.
Excessive reliance on reserves: Last January, 56,700 reservists had been called up. That peaked at 219,500 in May, then lipped to 183,700 at year end.
Maintenance of equipment: Deployments from Europe and Iraq to Japan and Korea are wearing out arms and equipment faster than they can be maintained.
Today robbing tomorrow: The need to pay for today`s operations is stealing funds that might be spent on tomorrow`s arms to reserve U.S. military power.
The pace of operations has produced, perhaps ironically, a bright spot. The chief of staff of the Army, General Peter J. Schoomaker, said recently: "Many of our soldiers have now served more than once in combat and on numerous contingency operations in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans or elsewhere, giving our Army a level of experience we have not seen in a long time."
While U.S. military commanders in Korea and at the Pacific Command in Hawaii keep a close eye on North Korea, they have said repeatedly that they do not expect the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, to be so rash as to attack South Korea, where 37,000 American troops are posted.
More important, the armed forces of South Korea are better armed, equipped, trained and led than those of North Korea, although the North Korean force is larger. On the ground, South Korea would need little help from the U.S. Thus soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii, which have been poised to reinforce U.S. troops in South Korea, have been alerted for duty in Iraq later this year.
If mainland China seeks to capture the island of Taiwan, over which it claims sovereignty, the defense of Taiwan might require U.S. naval and air forces to intervene under the Taiwan Relations act. The U.S. has been gradually shifting such units from the Atlantic to the Pacific against just such a contingency.
More uncertain, however, is the terrorist threat to the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. So far, the U.S. has provided those nations with intelligence on terrorists and small training teams of Special Forces. What of tomorrow?
At a conference in Washington last month, this question was brought before a panel of senior officers. The commandant of the Marine Corps, General Michael W. Hagee, reflected the views of many officers: "Have we arrived at a point where we`re going to have forces spread throughout the world, the Sinai, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan? If we have, then I think the answer might be that we do in fact need an end to strength increase."
By Richard Halloran
Richard Halloran, a former New York Times foreign correspondent in Asia and military correspondent in Washington, D.C., writes from Honolulu. - Ed.
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