Sundary Herald March 24, 2002
America: overstretched, overloaded, over there
It's operating in every continent on Earth ... and now it's beginning to creak at the seams. With the war on terror stretching endlessly into the future, Diplomatic Editor Trevor Royle reports on the state of the US war machine, and takes a look at Britain's own sorry figures
IF a policeman's lot is not a happy one, then (with all due apologies to WS Gilbert) the world's supercop, the US, must be downright miserable. A recent Pentagon briefing paper revealed that US forces are now deployed in every continent of the globe, either keeping the peace or firing shots in anger against the nation's enemies. 'Overall, the American military global presence is more pervasive than at any point in American history,' claims John Pike, a Washington-based military analyst. Some of those deployments are better known than others. Across the Asia-Pacific theatre the US has 1230 service personnel deployed in 21 countries as advisers on 24 missions. Their presence is shadowy, but in Afghanistan US forces enjoy their highest but most dangerous profile as 5000 troops attempt to mop up the remaining Taliban and al-Qaeda forces while doing their best to avoid being suckered into a Soviet-style stalemate.
Operation Enduring Freedom is being fought in the open and amidst the glare of publicity -- inasmuch as heights of the Afghan massif allow it to be -- but elsewhere, as in the Asia-Pacific region, the presence is virtually unheralded. With good reason, US defence planners are coy about revealing precise information concerning the deployment of their forces -- the terrorist threat provides sufficient reason -- but they are prepared to admit to a global presence that includes central Asia, eastern and western Europe, the Pacific, Latin America, and south and south-east Asia.
'Although President Bush warned in his election campaign that the military had too many overseas commitments, since he came to office these have been expanded to include places like Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, Indo nesia and the Philippines,' says a military source. 'As to figures, let's put it this way: when the American Forces Radio and Television Service transmitted the Super Bowl back in January, it went out to 177 countries and around 140 warships. No one missed a second of the Rams-Patriots clash.'
While the US has big enough shoulders and a deep enough purse to maintain its global presence, there are growing fears, within and outside the defence community, that the country might be doing too much and that its forces could become the victims of 'mission creep' -- the jargon used when a force fails to achieve its objective and finds itself without a realisable exit policy. Vietnam is the obvious comparison. What began as military aid to the South Vietnamese government in the early 1960s ended up as a full-scale war which quickly became unpopular, and, because of that, unwinnable.
Afghanistan, too, is full of awful warnings about what happens when one country attempts to impose its military will on another. Last week General Wesley Clark, the former commander of Nato forces in Europe, warned as much when he said that there were 'worrisome signs' that the US and its allies were drifting into a situation similar to that which faced the Soviet forces after their invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. 'We are a long way from this being over,' he said, 'and it could still all go wrong.'
Warnings of that kind would once have sent tremors through the Pentagon and the State Department, but following the September 11 terrorist attacks there is a new bullishness in President George W Bush's inner councils that pours cold water on any fear that history might be repeating itself. Partly it comes from the determined, can-do hawkishness of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and vice-president Richard Cheney, partly it is fostered by the locker-room joshing encouraged by Bush, but is also helped by the burgeoning self-confidence (some might say self-righteousness) of a team whose motto seems to be: 'America will fight and America will be right'.
With that in mind, senior officers were quietly seething about reports which suggested that Operation Enduring Freedom was suddenly on the back foot in Afghanistan. Especially galling was the suggestion that the soldiers of the elite 10th Mountain Division had loused up in the battle against the terrorists and had been forced to call on Britain's 45 Commando to help them out of the mess. Satisfying though that might have been for this side of traditional US-UK military rivalries, it is very far from the truth. Looking back with the advantage of hindsight, US commanders now concede that they were over-eager in claiming a victory and that the opposition was tougher and more resolute than had first appeared. The onset of spring weather has also been a factor.
'Fighting at high altitude, carrying full kit and heavy weapons, is not for the faint-hearted,' says a US military source who has experience of mountain warfare. 'At 12,000ft the relative lack of oxygen takes its toll on the metabolism, and it also affects weapons systems. Then there is the terrain itself -- hard-going and unyielding. I understand that some of the guys were literally hauling each other up when they were on the high ground.'
In that sort of environment even the best-trained troops find it difficult to operate at full efficiency, and most experts are agreed that three weeks is the maximum for full operational efficiency. Bodies tire more easily and recovery time is longer. Mental exhaustion -- a by-product of being in non-stop combat -- is also a factor, and the cold takes an obvious toll. These problems stacked up quickly and led the US to take Tony Blair at his word by asking for military support, hence the unexpected deployment of the 45 Commando battle group. While men on the ground will be a bonus to the US forces, the most welcome ingredient of the commando unit will be the artillery support provided by the six 105mm light guns of 29 Commando Artillery Regiment, which can fire high-explosive shells over 10 miles at a rate of six rounds per minute and are deployed underslung from a Chinook helicopter.
Inevitably the British deployment has attracted concerns about our own mission creep -- Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon admits that it is an 'open-ended commitment' and that reinforcements might be needed later. There is also a fear that it might cause unnecessary confusion for the British elements of the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, where the soldiers of the 2nd Parachute Regiment are being replaced by the 1st Royal Anglian Regiment. Senior officers have already voiced the fear that offensive actions against Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists could turn the lightly-armed Anglians into easy targets, and in so doing destabilise Hamid Karzai's fledgling interim regime.
But the biggest and the mainly unspoken fear is the ever-present danger of overstretch. Manpower figures are at their lowest level for years. Last week a Ministry of Defence briefing paper revealed the embarrassing information that the Army is 1500 soldiers short of its target of 108,500 personnel, and it was pointed out with some glee that this shortfall is roughly the size of the Afghanistan-bound commando force. With troops deployed at varying strength in 80 countries -- the Balkans being the biggest drain, with 5500 soldiers of the 7th Armoured Brigade in Kosovo and 3000 in Bosnia, where the lead unit is the 1st King's Own Royal Border Regiment -- it is little wonder that some senior commanders are beginning to wonder where it will all end.
The distinguished military historian Sir John Keegan spoke for many of them when he said that, with the deployment of the country's main intervention forces -- first the 2nd Parachute Regiment in Kabul and then 45 Commando on offensive operations -- the government will be 'hard pressed to find sufficient strength if another emergency occurs'. As a former lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, Keegan knows most of the present generation of senior commanders, and what he says usually finds a receptive audience.
In addition to the obvious worries about mission creep and overstretch (one commander said that sending 45 Commando into Afghanistan was like Manchester United going to the European Cup final without replacements or reserves), Keegan pointed to the danger of overextending its two main intervention forces, the 16th Air Assault Brigade and 3 Commando Brigade, together with their specialist artil lery, engineer and logistic support units. Not only was this dangerous, but it offended line-infantry and foot-guards regiments by creating the impression that dangerous missions could only be left to the 'red and green machine' (so-called from the colours of the Parachute Regiment and Royal Marine Commando berets).
The greater size and complexity of the US forces helps to obliterate that kind of distinction -- though soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division might dispute that -- but here, too, overstretch is an enemy. In the Philippines, as part of Operation Eternal Justice, 660 specialist advisers are in action against Abu Sayyaf guerrillas on the island of Basilan. Although permitted to fire only in self-defence, they and their Huey helicopters have been fighting alongside front-line Filipino troops, and their presence is a much-needed prop in the administration's battle against terrorism. While the operation is being contained within limits, the US advisers, including more than 100 from the special forces, will soon have to be replaced, and that dependence on specialist expertise can quickly become a drain on finite resources.
For US defence planners, this could become a major headache. In addition to providing personnel and equipment for the forces involved in Enduring Freedom, increasingly seen as the premier operational league, they have to find resources for the other major deployments. In the Balkans there are contributions (soon to be reduced) to the Nato-led peacekeeping operation in Kosovo (Task Force Falcon) and to the stabilisation force in Bosnia (Task Force Eagle), while in the Gulf region the US's air force, alongside Britain's, France's and Saudi Arabia's, has had 10 years' experience of running Operation Northern Watch and Operation Southern Watch, conducting offensive air operations over Iraq's two no-fly zones.
There are also command and control centres in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and their most lethal asset is the US Fifth Fleet, which provides commanders with a 'force of choice' comprising a carrier battle group and amphibious ready group of never less than 20 ships with about 1000 people ashore and 15,000 afloat, a number of combat aircraft as well as other support units and ships. Add a similar deterrent deployment in the Pacific by the Seventh Fleet and it becomes clear that the US global reach is not only effective but expensive in personnel -- which at the last count numbered just over 1.3 million. Backing them up are pre-positioned stores of equipment and ammunition, a legacy of the Gulf war, when it took armadas of transport aircraft to get the necessary forces in place to oust Iraq from Kuwait.
While this preparedness offers a shelter from any storms which might lie over the horizon, it comes at a price. Quite apart from being a drain on the US defence budget, the aggressive forward policies adopted by the US could anger uneasy allies such as Russia and China. Fighting global terrorism from bases in former client republics has been one thing, but allowing the US supercop a presence in every neigh bourhood will be ano ther matter.
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