PRESIDENT BUSH so bestrides the American political landscape that his power exceeds his agenda. Already the bills for a Department of Homeland Security and terrorism insurance have been whisked through by a lame-duck Congress, which also, for good measure, approved the appeals-court nomination of Judge Dennis Shedd. Now what?
The more cautious Republicans are hoping the president takes a modest, one-step-at-a-time approach to the coming legislative year, piling up small victories without giving Democrats any issue around which to rally their broken party. Many conservatives, salivating at the prospect of exercising majority power, believe the president should go for the big play on deeper tax cuts, strict-constructionist judges, or Social Security privatization.
There is, however, another goal worth working towards, one both bold and consequential, but also unlikely to become a rallying point for Democrats: a dramatic increase in defense spending. The president could thus stick to the security agenda that is the key to his strength as a leader and at the same time make up for the administration’s biggest shortcoming–its failure to reverse the deterioration of the American military that began in the ’90s. As it stands, the continued success of the Bush Doctrine rests upon a military force built by–and weakened by–Bill Clinton.
American military forces are already too small for all the missions they’ve been assigned. The two-war standard that has been the basis of U.S. military planning since the 19th century has been abandoned (ironically, this happened just months before September 11). The pinch from trying to bring about change on the cheap is already being felt.
Delivering the relatively small pre-deployments for war in Iraq–there are perhaps 60,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines in the theater–has been difficult for America’s brittle global military structure. And though the coming war will employ a smaller, more maneuverable, and more lethal force than did the 1991 Gulf War, it may well place greater stress on the overall active-duty force.
A drawn-out dance with U.N. inspectors will also play havoc with military preparations. Like an athlete straining to achieve maximum fitness for a championship game, U.S. forces will soon reach a peak of readiness that cannot be maintained forever. Sending three or four carrier battle groups, for example, to the Gulf region (as opposed to the six used in Desert Storm), demands that the Navy “surge” its deployments. The other services, likewise, are synchronizing personnel, maintenance, and training cycles in expectation of imminent action. While there is no guns-of-August inevitability to these cycles, “standing down” from mobilization does mean it will take some months to stand back up.
And fighting could turn out to be the easy part. Extended post-combat stabilization in Iraq–even if victory comes quickly–will pose a larger problem still for overstretched forces. Here the burden will fall disproportionately on the shrunken U.S. Army, though other branches might be shifted to help out: Air Force units that have been based in Saudi Arabia for the past decade could be relocated to Iraq, and Navy deployments probably would return to “normal,” which means a carrier group on station in the region all the time.
One reason the Bush administration has been so reluctant to commit to nation-building in Iraq is that doing so would compromise the ability of U.S. forces to meet obligations elsewhere. Commitments in the Balkans and Afghanistan (and other, smaller missions including the one in the Sinai) already consume a worrying percentage of Army manpower, including almost the entire European garrison. A long-term Army presence of even one division–the size of the initial Bosnia deployment–would essentially tie up the entire force for years to come. Smaller elite units such as the 82nd Airborne could and should be reconstituted after the war is over, but the remaining few divisions stationed in the United States would find themselves enmeshed in a permanent cycle of rotations to one hot spot or another. Soldiers would be either in Iraq, returning from Iraq, or preparing to go to Iraq if not some other distant constabulary duty.
If pacifying Iraq requires a larger force–and replacing the Baath regime with a representative government while holding the country together is a big job–then an extended call-up of reservists may be needed. But the current mobilization system was not designed for simultaneous commitments of partial force scattered across the globe. It was designed for an all-out world war, that is, total commitment in one region. Service personnel experts, both military and civilian, admit the already strained system will likely collapse under the weight of foreseeable new commitments.
Thus does the Bush Doctrine promise to challenge the fundamental premise of the all-volunteer, professional force. During the Cold War and immediately afterwards, the United States could offer its soldiers something very much like an American middle-class life. Being in the armed forces was a job with something like regular hours that happened to take a soldier and his or her family to a foreign country. Army and Air Force duty was largely garrison duty. But the war on terror is drastically changing military service. American soldiers will not be taking their families to Iraq.
And Iraq is only one element of the overall war on terror. No other combat action may be as large–although what might be required to keep Pakistan from falling into the wrong hands could rival or exceed the task of removing Saddam–but the potential extent and duration of U.S. commitment is enormous. The war on terror involves a handful of rogue regimes plus a loose confederation of radical Islamic terrorist groups like al Qaeda that stretches from the eastern Mediterranean to southern Asia. Furthermore, as large as the war on terror is and may become, it is but one of the global jobs for the sole superpower.
Not only is today’s force too small, it’s getting old, dangerously so. The American military remains the most technologically sophisticated on the planet, yet it hasn’t really bought a new class of weaponry since Ronald Reagan was president. As superb as today’s aircraft, ships, and land combat vehicles are, they represent designs of the 1970s. New production programs like the F-22 strike fighter have been so starved of funds during the past decade that they now represent investments of limited value–1980s designs meant to enter service in the 1990s. But scrapping late-Cold-War designs entirely would be a far worse alternative. Indeed, there is no real alternative. New stockpiles of smart weapons can extend the utility of today’s platforms, but they don’t obviate the need for new platforms.
Nor is “transformation”–the administration’s favorite buzzword– proving to be the low-budget answer to all strategic questions. Transformation enthusiasts assumed the end of the Soviet empire had created a “strategic pause” that allowed the United States to “divest” itself of obsolete missions, forces, and weaponry at little risk. Until China matured into the next great power threat, Pentagon thinking went, there wasn’t much to worry about. Funds wasted on today’s force were better spent inventing the smaller, faster, cheaper forces of tomorrow.
The Bush administration’s first attempt at restructuring U.S. forces, the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, failed badly. (Remember, before September 11, when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was rumored to be the first cabinet casualty?) The upcoming 2004 defense budget is supposed to be a second shot at transformation, but the latest news suggests the request will be less than revolutionary.
Fixing these problems, making up for a decade of defense neglect and closing the growing gap between strategic ends and military means, will be an expensive proposition. Previous estimates of what was required to reverse Clinton’s military legacy called for an additional $75 to $100 billion annually. That now seems underpriced in light of the events of the past year. But even a larger increase would hold total military spending to less than 5 percent of gross domestic product, low by recent historical standards.
National security doctrines that aren’t backed by adequate force are meaningless. Imagine, in 1950, if President Truman had committed the United States to war in Korea and to contain communism without reversing the drawdown of forces after World War II. Like the Cold War, the contest against regional rogues like Saddam Hussein and terrorists like al Qaeda (and the commitment to contain Chinese Communist ambitions) promises to be a long struggle. President Bush has been frank about this, and his candor has won him the trust of the American people–and a Congress in support. He’s been given extraordinary latitude in reorganizing the government to protect the homeland. And if he asks for it, he will be given the defense budget needed to defeat the enemy abroad.
Tom Donnelly is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
