Brookings Institution dinner

US Department of Defense Speeches, May 5, 2008

The nearly two decades since the end of the Cold War have presented a different set of challenges to our national security apparatus. We have seen a number of events and developments that called on our military and civilian agencies to train and equip indigenous security forces, jump start reconstruction, provide jobs, and improve public services--and to do all these things in the face of brutal and adaptive insurgencies.

Overall, dealing effectively with the missions at hand has been hindered by lumbering bureaucracies operating with peacetime processes, authorities, and budget cycles designed to act in months and years when results were needed in days and weeks. Despite the heroic effort of individual soldiers and diplomats and many successful operations--the surge in Iraq being the most recent and compelling example--the whole of our government's activities has often added up to less than the sum of the parts.

In some cases, the obstacle was simply a matter of having enough of the right people with the right skills. Since 2001, the base budget for the Defense Department has grown to more than half a trillion dollars, a more than 70 percent increase--not counting the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But it was only recently that we began to recoup part of the deep cuts in personnel made at the end of the Cold War, when the active Army alone lost nearly 300,000 troops--40 percent of its strength. Last year, I recommended, and the President directed, an expansion of the Army and Marine Corps by more than 90,000 troops over the next five years. The Congress on a bipartisan basis has been strongly supportive. This increase, along with a range of other measures, should reduce the stress on our ground forces--both troops and their families--the small sliver of our population who have borne the burdens and sacrificed so much on our behalf.

However, this increase in manpower is more than just a response to the strains of the current conflicts. We have seen that, if nothing else, the asymmetric conflicts of the 21st century--the "war amongst the people" as British General Sir Rupert Smith put it--are inherently manpower intensive affairs; campaigns where America's traditional advantages in firepower and technology do not necessarily provide victory in the way that Clauswitz would have understood it, which is achieving a political objective. In today's world of asymmetric conflict, technology is a critical enabler, but it is no substitute for sufficient number of well trained, innovative boots on the ground.

In this area, the past is prologue. Ever since General Winfield Scott led his army into Mexico in the 1840s, nearly every major deployment of American forces has led to a subsequently longer military presence of substantial troop size to maintain stability. General Eisenhower, when tasked with administering North Africa in 1942, wrote, "The sooner I can get rid of all of these questions that are outside the military in scope, the happier I will be! Sometimes, I think I live 10 years each week, of which at least nine are absorbed in political and economic matters."