Hello Ron Hawkmoon, <<I'm also saying that because we failed to take decisive action after 1991 in creating political and economic change in the region, we're paying a much higher price now.
But that price will be even higher 4-5 years from now..
And that's a price I don't want any of our young people to have to pay..>>
In case you missed this ... the tab is increasing fast ...
<<Redeployment and the Strategic Miscalculation
stratfor.com
August 18, 2004
On Aug. 16, U.S. President George W. Bush announced a global redeployment of U.S. military forces. Bush said: "More of our troops will be stationed and deployed from here at home. We'll move some of our troops and capabilities to new locations, so they can surge quickly to deal with unexpected threats. We'll take advantage of 21st-century military technologies to rapidly deploy increased combat power. The new plan will help us fight and win these wars of the 21st century." On the surface, the redeployment is important. There is a global war under way and any redeployment of forces at this time matters. However, there are other reasons why the redeployment is significant.
There are 1,425,687 men and women on active duty in the U.S. armed forces. The redeployment of roughly 70,000 troops over a period of 10 years -- or even in one year -- really doesn't matter, even if most of them came from the U.S. Army, which currently consists of almost 500,000 troops. The shift affects roughly 10 percent of the standing Army, which is not trivial. Neither is it decisive.
There are some important geopolitical implications that go beyond the numbers. Germany is clearly being downgraded as a reliable ally. The possible shift of U.S. naval headquarters from the United Kingdom to Italy tightens relations with Italy -- and focuses the Navy on the Mediterranean and away from the Atlantic. Deploying U.S. troops to Romania and Bulgaria increases the U.S. presence in southeastern Europe and improves access to the Middle East. The reduction of forces on the Korean Peninsula is a reminder to South Koreans to be careful what they wish for -- they might get it. Moving forces into Australia clearly signifies the growing importance of the U.S.-Australian relationship for the Pacific. Permanent bases in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan confirm an already existing relationship and emphasize a further decline of the Russian sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union.
But all of these things are relative and incremental. There simply aren't that many forces moving around to tilt geopolitical relationships in any fundamental way. Nor do the shifts necessarily make as much sense as it might seem. Certainly there is no longer a reason to base troops in Germany, but troops need to be based somewhere. The idea that the strategic reserve should reside in the continental United States is a defensible notion, but not an obvious one. The major theaters of operation for the United States are currently between the Mediterranean and the Hindu Kush. Germany is a lot closer than the United States.
Post-Cold War Notions
In order to understand the thinking going on here, it is important to understand a discussion that has been going on in the defense community since the end of the Cold War. As U.S. forces were reduced, the number of individual commitments of troops did not decline. During the Clinton years, operations ranged from Haiti to Kosovo to Iraq. The United States had to find a way for a smaller force to compensate for its size by increasing its tempo of operations and effectiveness.
Les Aspin, Bill Clinton's first defense secretary, conducted something called the "Bottom-Up Review" that focused on this question: How could the United States intervene in the Eastern Hemisphere, in unpredictable theaters of operation, in a timely fashion, with an effective force? During Desert Storm, it took six months to deploy a force large enough to invade Kuwait. That was too long -- and it took too long because the Army needed too many tanks, troops and supplies to wage war. The question became how to reduce the amount of forces needed to achieve the same goals.
The answer for Aspin was to reduce the forces needed by increasing lethality through technology. Increased dependence on air power and increased lethality for Army equipment were supposed to reduce the size of the force. That meant the force could get there faster. Aviation, special operations and light infantry became the darlings of the Defense Department. Armor and artillery became the problem.
Aspin focused speed and lethality, on how fast the force could get there and on how quickly it could destroy the enemy force. The question of the occupation of the target country was addressed only in terms of a concept called "Operations Other Than War." Some operations were to be primarily humanitarian in nature. Other operations would become humanitarian as soon as the projection of decisive force was achieved. After that, forces would shift to another task: nation-building. Haiti was a case of nation-building from the get-go. Kosovo was a case of nation-building after military victory.
Neither of them is a poster child for the idea of using the military in operations other than war, and Bush sharply criticized the Clinton people for squandering military resources on non-military goals. Bush's argument was that nation-building was difficult at best, that the military was not well-suited for the task and that nation-building, while nice, was not a fundamental American national interest in most cases.
It was an interesting debate that in retrospect missed the key point -- by ignoring the fact that the occupation of a hostile nation was in fact a military problem. Clinton assumed that once troops were deployed and the enemy defeated, the occupation would cease to be a combat problem. Bush argued that wasting troops on non-combat problems was a mistake. Both missed the point that after power projection and high-intensity conflict, you did not necessarily enter a non-military phase. You could be entering a third phase of the war: the occupation of a hostile country.
Afghanistan and Iraq were both cases in which the United States occupied hostile territory. It does not take an entire country to make that country hostile; a relatively small force can create a hostile combat environment. Arguing about how big the opposition might be is irrelevant. It is big enough in both countries that U.S. forces are at war. And this brings us to the central problem.
Rumsfeld and Aspin agreed on the fundamental premise: a smaller, more agile force is better. They were both right, so long as the focus is on power projection and the destruction of conventional enemy forces. But when you shift to the occupation of a hostile country, smaller size works against you and agility diminishes radically in importance. The occupation of a country can be enhanced only marginally by technology. Occupation requires a force large enough to gain control of the country while waging counterinsurgency operations. That represents a lot of boots on the ground -- and a lot of tank treads.
Counting On Occupation
Now, it might be argued that occupation and counterinsurgency are bad ideas. We are prepared to entertain that notion. What cannot be debated is that the United States is currently engaged in two campaigns -- Afghanistan and Iraq -- in which the occupation of hostile territory is the mission. It is also possible that in coming years, there will be more such operations. The problem is that U.S. forces are not configured for the mission. The institutional hostility toward a large army that permeated the Defense Department under both Clinton and Bush has now started to move to a crisis level -- and the Bush administration still has not responded to it.
The administration has pointed out that it has hit its targets in recruiting and retaining personnel since the beginning of the Iraq war. In 2001, the recruiting goal for the Army was 75,800; the National Guard was 60,252; and the reserve was 34,910. In 2002, the numbers were 79,500; 54,087; and 48,461. In 2003, the goals were 73,800; 62,000; and 26,400. In 2004, they are 71,739; 56,000; and 21,200. In other words, recruiting for the active Army and reserve stayed basically unchanged, while goals for the National Guard declined. The United States is in a global war in which two countries are currently being occupied and there has been only a 30,000-man increase authorized by Congress.
Attempting to occupy two countries without massively increasing the size of the Army is an extraordinary decision. But it is completely understandable in terms of the Aspin-Rumsfeld view of the military problem. Occupation of a large territory in the face of hostile forces was not perceived to be a fundamental military requirement. In part, this was because it was assumed the United States would avoid such environments. But both Afghanistan and Iraq were precisely this kind of environment, and prudent military planning required that careful thought be given to the manpower-intense mission of occupation. By the end of 2003, it should have been clear that, like it or not, the United States was in the occupation business. But the thinking that went on before Iraq -- that as in Japan or Germany in World War II, resistance would halt once the capital fell -- simply did not go away. The obvious was not absorbed as a fact.
Instead, the Defense Department has resorted to stop-loss strategies: preventing people from leaving when their terms of service are up, calling up the Individual Ready Reserve and exhausting the reserve and National Guard. Most importantly, it has resorted to the only real solution available: insufficient forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. It has tried to fill the gap with contractors, which works to some extent; but the job of occupation -- if it is to be undertaken at all -- is a job for the Army, and there simply are not enough soldiers available. The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, for example, is currently the lead occupying force in the Anbar province in Iraq -- hardly the "tip of the spear" combat force that the Marines are supposed to be.
It is in this context that the order to redeploy 70,000 troops should be read. First, it is an attempt to reshuffle the same deck, when what is needed are more cards. Second, the pace of the redeployments -- measured in years rather than weeks -- indicates that the administration knows there is no real solution here -- or it indicates that the administration still doesn't appreciate the urgency of the situation.
That the Army -- other services as well, but the Army is the key here -- is at its limits has been obvious for months. What is interesting to us is that the president, in his speech, continued to focus on the first two missions (projection and destruction of enemy forces) and still has not focused on the centrality of combat in occupation zones. We don't have much of a force to project at this point, so increasing the capability is not really germane.
It is not something he wants to tackle now, but whoever becomes president will be doing so. There are two options: The draft, which will not produce the kind of force needed, or massive increases in the size of the volunteer force using economic incentives. Gen. Douglas MacArthur said we should never fight a land war in Asia after Korea. Vietnam sort of confirmed that. Whether anyone has noticed, we are in another land war in Asia and in Asian wars, technology is great, but riflemen and tanks are the foundation.
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