The Kansas City Star November 8, 2004
The need for troops persists
By Scott Canon
In its first term, the Bush administration invaded two countries even as it labored to transform the military into something smaller and lighter.
Combat success came quickly in Afghanistan and Iraq. Then came the untidy aftermath: Much of Afghanistan remained ungoverned, while American troops found themselves in a bloody occupation of Iraq.
Together, the military victories and the difficult postwar deployments made for the yin and yang of transforming the Defense Department.
Analysts say that given four more years, President Bush's defense team might continue to muscle through changes that replace heavy armor with clever technology while shifting more troops from overseas posts to stateside bases such as Fort Riley, Kan.
Some of the toughest battles — led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld against generals and admirals in the Pentagon — already have been fought. In those conflicts, the uniformed brass often had to give ground to Rumsfeld and his desire for forces that could be more quickly deployed.
But that's hardly the end of the transformation. The administration will have to prioritize its spending on weapons and manpower.
“You're already seeing a shift away from technology and toward putting boots on the ground,” said Charles Heyman, a senior defense analyst for Jane's Defence Consultancy in Great Britain. “The question isn't how to win the big battles. It's finding the troops, and in large enough numbers, to deal with what happens afterward.”
At some point, the administration must decide how best to organize its troop force — including how much it can continue to rely on the National Guard and reserves, or how much it will need to increase the number of active-duty troops.
It will also face questions about how, and to what extent, to shift personnel from the Air Force and the Navy to the ground-pounding jobs performed by the Army and Marines.
And winners must be sorted from losers as Congress and the administration decide how much war-fighting hardware the country can pay for if the federal budget slips deeper into the red.
“What happens when the budget goes down?” asked Cindy Williams, a defense analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “These problems stemming from the deficit could mean you have less to work with.”
In fact, she noted that second presidential terms often see defense spending drop as the commander in chief feels freer to offend Pentagon lobbyists and the residents of states reliant on defense contracts.
For instance, defense spending in President Ronald Reagan's second term fell in response to a growing deficit and military procurement scandals.
“There was a sense that the country had thrown too much money at the Defense Department for it to absorb it efficiently,” Williams said.
In the Bush administration, the Pentagon's money problems aren't imminent. Its need for troops is.
Reserve and National Guard units have begun to have trouble signing up new recruits, while troops currently in the ranks have chafed at long deployments. In active-duty units, so-called “stop loss” orders have kept personnel in uniform beyond the end of their original obligations.
In response, the Army has begun a reorganization that puts five brigades into a division instead of three. The change also generally breaks down forces into smaller, independent units that can be rotated through places like Afghanistan or Iraq — or used for combat missions — more quickly.
“Next summer, you're going to see a realization that the Army (National) Guard and reserves, as presently configured, are broken,” said John Pike, a defense analyst and director of GlobalSecurity.org. “What they are doing is using them as a stopgap.”
Pike and others said Rumsfeld would continue efforts such as its “blue to green” campaign, which entices Navy and Air Force troops to join the Army.
Defense officials will need to sort out how much to shift troop strength between services and how to gain congressional authorization for a larger Army. Sen. John Kerry had pledged in his run for the presidency to boost the size of the Army by 40,000 troops, but the service is already running on temporary approval to operate at 30,000 troops over its formal authorization.
Meantime, the reorganization points more troops toward training in the infantry, in civil affairs and in military police functions, because those specialties are needed in occupation and peacekeeping roles — the common, if unwelcome, duty put on the military in recent years.
“We've shown that we can win the battle before the other guy even knows what hits him. The problem comes next,” said Loyola University of Chicago scholar John Allen Williams, co-author of The U.S. Army in a New Security Era.
“You realize you can't get away with fewer forces,” he said. “Stabilization operations require more troops.”
Both Bush and Kerry campaigned on pledges not to revive the military draft. And Pentagon leaders have made clear their preference for an all-volunteer military. Only the idea of another pre-emptive war — say an invasion of Iran to keep it from achieving nuclear capability — gets analysts to speculate about the possibility.
“You know, (Bush's) father promised ‘no new taxes' and then the situation changed,” said David R. Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland. “But Bush and Rumsfeld are philosophically opposed to a draft, so that makes it a remote possibility.”
The Bush administration already has shifted troops geographically, deciding earlier this year to reduce strength in the Cold War outposts of Europe. Many of those units will be headquartered on U.S. soil — a move intended to cut costs and relieve the burden on military families of overseas missions.
At the same time, the Base Closure and Realignment Commission is sorting out which installations to shutter in a decades-long effort to trim costs. Experts generally expect Fort Riley to survive, because it isn't hemmed in by suburban sprawl the way some coastal bases have become.
“Any base that gets these units returning to the U.S. is going to be in good shape,” said Pike. “Any base that doesn't, well, they're in trouble.”
Weapons systems, too, might fall victim to budget concerns and the changing mission of a modern military. The Air Force has invested billions in its F-22 fighter. But critics say that in a war on terror — and with China and North Korea far behind where even Soviet military technology had been — the need for greater power in dogfights becomes harder to justify.
Likewise plans for new aircraft carriers, destroyers or submarines don't fit neatly into the transformation to a lighter military.
“There comes a point,” said Cindy Williams of MIT, “where you can't afford everything.”
© Copyright 2004, The Kansas City Star
