International Herald Tribune Editorial - A real-world army

International Herald Tribune Editorial - A real-world army
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: December 26, 2006


Military reality finally broke through the Bush administration's ideological wall last week, with President George W. Bush publicly acknowledging the need to increase the size of the overstretched U.S. Army and Marine Corps.

Larger ground forces are an absolute necessity for the sort of battles America is likely to fight during the coming decades: extended clashes with ground-based insurgents rather than high-technology shootouts with rival superpowers. Bush's belated recognition is welcome, though it comes only after significant damage has been done to the army's morale, recruitment standards and fighting readiness. Given the time required to recruit and train the additional troops, the proposed increase will not make much difference in Iraq's current battles. But over time it will help make America more secure and better prepared to meet future crises.

The need for more troops has for some time been obvious to Americans. They have heard from neighbors or from news reports of tours of duty involuntarily extended, second and even third deployments to Iraq, lowered recruiting standards and members of the National Guard and Reserves vowing to get out. That is the inevitable consequence of trying to squeeze out an additional 160,000 soldiers for Iraq and Afghanistan year after year without significantly increasing overall ground forces.

But it took the departure of Donald Rumsfeld — the author of the failed Iraq policy and the doctrine of going to war with less than the army America needed — for Bush finally to accept this reality.

When the 21st century began, Pentagon planners expected that American forces could essentially coast unchallenged for a few decades, relying on superior air and sea power, while preparing for possible future military competition with an increasingly powerful China. That meant investing in the air force and navy, not the army and Marines.

Then 9/11 changed everything, except the Pentagon mind-set. During the Rumsfeld years, reality was subordinated to a dogma of "transformation," which declared that with a little more technology, the army could do a lot more fighting with fewer soldiers than its senior generals believed necessary.

Every year since 2001 has brought increased demands on America's slimmed-down and dollar-starved ground forces, while billions continued to flow into sustaining the oversized and underused air force and navy, and modernizing their state-of- the-art equipment. As a result, the overall Pentagon budget is larger than it needs to be, while the part going to overtaxed ground forces is too small.

Increasing those ground forces will cost roughly $1.5 billion a year for every 10,000 troops added, as well as tens of billions in one-time recruitment and equipment expenses. But America can afford it and it can be done without any significant increase in the annual military budget.

Over time, bigger ground forces will mean more sustainable troop rotations, fewer overseas deployments of the National Guard and better battlefield ratios of American to enemy fighters. That is the least America owes to the men and women who risk their lives to keep us all more