Are they in the army now? Cries of shortfall, exhaustion, and overstretch

National Review, July 4, 2005 by Victor Davis Hanson

FIGURES on U.S. military recruitment just released for 2005 show that the Army missed its monthly announced goal, achieving only 75 percent of its anticipated enlistments for this May. The Army National Guard and the Army Reserve also missed their desired monthly targets. Stories in the press followed, claiming that the Pentagon is lowering Army standards to pull in new recruits and address the fallout from the depressing news from Iraq.

Recent dips in Army enlistments also fueled a new conventional wisdom: that the U.S. military is almost dangerously undermanned, exhausted, and overstretched. An unpopular war, domestic opposition, televised casualties, extended service, divorce and social dislocations, an improving economy, and supposed disparity in the sacrifices made by troops of different races and classes have all, it is said, conspired to cut recruitment to the volunteer army and reserves to alarming levels.

In turn, fears of undermanned armed forces have prompted existential questions about who should serve and the nature of U.S. foreign policy. Opponents of the war in Iraq also make the argument-perhaps legitimate in its own right-that our options are limited in dealing with Syria, Iran, and North Korea because we are overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such critics also know that the cover of an exhausted military means they will never be called to spell out their exact position on the future use of force elsewhere.

Behind most critiques, oddly enough, is the promise of the draft. Some critics of the current war profess support for a return to conscription--both to address the purported manpower shortage and to ensure less military action abroad in the future. If a broader cross-section of the population serves in the military, it is argued, won't we all be more careful how it is used? And isn't the present system making inordinate demands on minorities, the poor, and the undereducated?

We might ask how accurate is the current picture of military disarray.

First, the Marines have suffered disproportionate fatalities in the war in Iraq. They are about 30 percent of all combat deaths, yet make up only 11 percent of current American forces. But in May the Marines slightly exceeded their recruitment goal. The Air Force and Navy likewise met 100 percent of their requirements. The Army traditionally has had the hardest time meeting its targets, given the reputation--warranted or not--that the other branches offer more specialized training and skills that will better enhance civilian careers without the same level of risk as ground combat.

Second, the year is only half over. The Army may well rebound and meet its full 2005 quota, as nearly all branches of the active services (the Army and Air National Guard were exceptions) did in 2004. Much depends on whether the economy continues to improve and thus competes for high-school graduates, and whether the Iraqi military can take over its envisioned preponderant military role, keeping the insurgency out of the daily headlines.

Third, on demographic grounds, our current troop mobilizations are hardly a drain on the U.S. population base. In a country of about 300 million residents, we have about 1.4 million troops deployed worldwide. Yet in 1974, during the first full year of the all-volunteer army, the United States deployed 1.9 million soldiers, drawing on a population of more than 210 million. In other words, when the population was just 70 percent of our current size, the armed forces sustained troop levels 1.3 times larger than our present military.

Critics harp on the expenses of the War on Terror and suggest that we are unable to sustain such a drain. Yet in the first full year of the volunteer army, military expenditures accounted for 58 percent of discretionary spending, or about 5.5 percent of the gross domestic product. In 2003, when we invaded Iraq with 200,000 troops and conducted reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, we allotted only 49 percent of discretionary spending to defense, some 3.7 percent of GDP--itself a moderate rise from 1999-2000, when defense expenditure had descended to the historical low of about 3 percent of GDP. This suggests the armed forces were inadequate to meet the security profile of the United States well before September 11.

If it turns out that we need more troops in the military, based on historical precedents and current resources, we surely have the population and national wealth to field larger forces than we presently deploy, and to pay them more than we do now.

But if critics insist that the 140,000 troops in Iraq are nevertheless too costly for the presently constituted U.S. military, and the current armed forces too costly for the United States, then they should examine very carefully our troop allotments elsewhere. We still have around 110,000 soldiers in various places in Europe, and almost another 80,000 in Japan and South Korea. Even if the argument can be made that the rise of China has replaced the threat of the Soviet Union and mandated that we maintain current troop levels in Japan, still thousands of troops in Europe and South Korea could be cut or deployed closer to the Middle East.