Military Preparedness: Pay Now Or More Later

What do 1940, 1948, 1964, 2000, and 2008 have in common?

Answer: The United States was facing large-scale involvement in difficult wars, and wasn’t prepared militarily nor by our presidents. Indeed, our presidents elected in those years won by promising to keep us out of war, though responsible to know better.

Wait. How did 2008 get in there?

The United States still faces a long haul in Iraq and an even longer war over both the future of the Mideast and of our security at home, while the potential for conflict in Asia mounts with China’s rapidly expanding military capabilities and essential economic and humanitarian threats rise due to kleptocracies, whether bald-faced or ideologically cloaked, in Africa and Latin America.

Yet, aside from kicking the in-Iraq troop level or burdens about for immediate political points, some candidates are speaking about incremental troop-level increases but no candidate for 2008 is prominently talking about the truly large-scale military build-up needed. It’s just not politically expedient.

A new AEI publication on land forces points out the simple truths about required land forces:

The experience of the past five years has at least taught us how much is not enough. Through the post-9/11 years, the number of soldiers in the active-duty Army--regulars plus activated reservists--has hovered between 600,000 and 625,000. Fully 40 percent of this force is deployed abroad. Active Marine strength is 180,000; the Marines rely less directly on their reserves. This "total land force" of about 800,000 has been strained to its limits to sustain the demands of ongoing operations. And, as the "surges" in Iraq and Afghanistan make clear, there has been a long-neglected need for larger deployments; we have fought our wars on the cheap.

The Bush administration's plans for expansion, outlined by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in January, do little to solve the basic problem. The Gates Plan would increase the size of the regular Army to 547,000; the best that can be said is that it might lighten the burden on the reserves, but the ability to sustain a surge level of effort would be very much in doubt. Also, the pace of the Gates Plan is slow: The expansion timetable stretches to 2012. Recently retired Army chief of staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, in his final congressional testimony, told the Senate that he had recommended a larger increase and a faster schedule, but that Gates rebuffed him. And in late April new Army chief Gen. George Casey revealed that he, too, wanted a faster timetable, directing his staff to "tell me what it would take to get it done faster."

The AEI author’s estimates of what’s needed:

Thus the most important step in fixing what's wrong with our land forces is to build a regular Army capable of conducting The Long War at a reasonable pace of deployments, without so completely engaging its own reserve components or the Marine Corps. A rough estimate would mean an active force of approximately 750,000 soldiers, still a smaller Army than at the end of the Cold War but an expansion roughly five times that envisioned by the Bush administration. Even at a faster pace of expansion such growth could well require the better part of a decade.

And the expense:

Many of the current estimates of the cost of expansion exclude these equipment costs. For example, a recent Congressional Budget Office study of the administration's expansion plans puts the annual increase at $14 billion by the time the Gates Plan is complete. Perhaps a better methodology, if still crude, is to use the Army's estimate of the cost of the "doctrinal" current force--that is, the force as it would be if it had all the right equipment, staffing, and resources--and do a proportional calculation. So if the cost of sustaining a force with an active component of 510,000 is, as estimated by the Army, $138 billion per year in 2008 dollars, then an Army half again as large is likely to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 billion per year. Again, the methodology is far from precise, but absent a better one, it serves as a benchmark. It's also a measure of the inadequacy of the current baseline budget: For 2007, before supplementals, the formal Army budget was $112 billion. I am not aware of a similar "doctrinal" cost estimate for the Marines, but it's a reasonable assumption that the gap between ends and means is similar.

And yet $200 billion is little more than one percent of America's annual gross domestic product. The question is not whether we can afford sufficient land forces, but whether we will choose to have them. In simple terms, the task is to restore the Army and Marine Corps to the manpower levels at the end of the Cold War.

Then, add hundreds of billions of dollars for the heavier and more advanced weapons and logistic capacities needed for the Navy and Air Force, including for their added roles in deterring or fighting possible major conflicts with a resurgent Russia or more aggressive China.

When we’re fighting at home about and unable to agree to either contain or to responsibly pay for new domestic programs and burgeoning entitlement programs, there’s little taste for full scale discussion and debate over this core national security issue.

As after 1940, 1948, 1964, and 2000 we’re likely to pay heavily in lost opportunities to deter war, decreased national security, consequent additional loss of lives, and divisive domestic bitterness after 2008.