The U.S. Army Must Remain Prepared for Battle
The U.S. Army Must Remain Prepared for Battle by Gian Gentile, Washington Post
… Virtually no Americans anticipated either the North Korean attack in 1950 or Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait 40 years later. That seems to be the pattern: U.S. presidents send the Army to resolve unexpected crises, ready or not.
The world today presents a wide array of potential threats to U.S. interests, including a failed North Korean state losing control of its weapons of mass destruction, the morass of civil war in Syria, an aggressive and expansionist Russia or China, or still-unforeseen humanitarian crises in Africa and other areas. If called upon, the U.S. Army would deploy and engage in peacekeeping operations or major combat between state and non-state actors. In any event, it needs to be ready.
Some have argued that after the frustrating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is little American appetite to send the Army into foreign lands, whether to fight, build nations or distribute humanitarian supplies. This line of thinking holds that the U.S. Air Force, Navy or Marine Corps can handle most of the security problems the world throws our way…
Another “We need a 1,000,000 Soldier active duty Army TODAY!” argument with little substantive analysis of threats or response.
From the article” The world today presents a wide array of potential threats to U.S. interests, including a failed North Korean state losing control of its weapons of mass destruction, the morass of civil war in Syria, an aggressive and expansionist Russia or China, or still-unforeseen humanitarian crises in Africa and other areas. If called upon, the U.S. Army would deploy and engage in peacekeeping operations or major combat between state and non-state actors. In any event, it needs to be ready.”
OK, one at a time. Failed North Korea — response, well mostly South Korea with our assistance as well as China’s. Probably not a huge Army commitment since a failed North Korea is going to be a humanitarian disaster, not a military one. And you are not going to secure NK Nukes with a division or two. The Forces needed will be relatively small and already on the peninsula
Civil war in Syria — So far, no Army commitment.
Expansionist Russia — Perhaps as far as there are ethnic Russians in the “near abroad”, but probably not more expansion than that. Army response: preposition a BCT or two of Armor in Poland, sell Poland all our A-10s for cheap. Not a huge commitment.
Expansionist China — that one is the Navy’s unless you are planning a land invasion of mainland China. Perhaps, but I will place that possibility as low. But if that is what you are thinking, than we are goign to need everything we have, and we can’t afford to keep 1.2 million Soldiers on active duty just in case China decides to get froggy.
Africa — Yes, but not more than an Infantry or Stryker BCT.
So far, taking all of those commitments together, you still don’t stretch a 450K Army, or even a 400K one.
This is the standard “we need everything right now because we can’t see the future” argument. FUD as policy. No in-depth analysis. No explanation of what combinations of forces are needed – Light versus Heavy; Active versus reserves. Nothing new, and nothing convincing.
TheCurmudgeon posted this farther below:
Agree completely that top earners and higher portions of income should be taxed at a higher rate. Your statement about 32% of income taxes going to defense is a distortion of the overall federal revenues that were as follows in FY13:
$3.5 trillion or 21% of GDP with $2.8 trillion in revenues and nearly $700 billion borrowed contributing to the $17 trillion debt.
The breakdown of programs using federal taxes/revenues in FY13 is as follows:
24% Social Security
22% Medicare/Medicaid
19% Defense (1/5 of 21% is 4.2% of GDP)
12% Safety net (unemployment, food stamps, housing assistance, etc.)
8% Federal retirees and veterans
6% Interest on debt
3% Transportation (gas taxes that should increase given better fuel efficiency)
2% Science and Medical research
1% Education (primarily paid for by state and property taxes)
1% International aid
3% All other
These figures came from this link:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258
So in addition to raising income tax rates on top earners, we also should be raising the maximum income on which Social Security and Medicare taxes are paid. Those whose income is primarily capital gains, such as Mitt Romney and others who elect more stock payments rather than straight salary need to pay a different tax rate on annual gains above say $100,000. That would partially compensate for the lower effective tax rate they pay and the lack of Social Security and Medicare payments. The wealthiest amongst us have seen their incomes rise $275% over the past decade while the typical family’s income has remained stagnant or actually declined. Improved tax fairness is appropriate since so few of our wealthiest families have sons/daughters serving our nation.
The rate of military compensation has accelerated far beyond inflation over the past 13+ years. In addition, Tricare payments must rise since there has not been an increase in years. Our troops deserve to be well compensated but considering that much of their pay is non-taxable they are highly compensated right now surpassing the level of their equivalent qualifications in the civil sector. A lottery-style draft for E-1 through E-3s in all services at reduced pay (enlistees too) would go a long way to reducing military personnel costs.
Revenues have been constrained by both political parties. What is it about Rand Paul and his dad (both doctors) who think that isolationism is the answer? Why don’t they fix the medical sector first? Obviously looking at the cost of Medicare/Medicaid and the increasing cost of medical insurance thanks to the “Affordable” Care Act, that is a far greater problem than defense spending.
If this administration would allow the Keystone pipeline and other drilling activities on public lands, additional revenues would be forthcoming and energy-related sanctions would be more effective. On the other hands, Nevada cattle ranchers who refuse to pay grazing rights fees for use of public lands are equally at fault and should not be turned into heroes. Both parties are at fault. Priorities for defense spending also have become distorted in favor of the air and sea services.
For instance, I’ve read that the Navy usually spends about $12 billion per year on ship construction. However when you want to build an $8 billion Ohio-Class replacement and a $14 billion new carrier, plus two Virginia class subs per year, you rapidly deplete that ship-building budget. Then the Navy starts asking to revise the proven even distribution of funds across the services by cutting the active Army to its smallest size since before WWII. $800 million LRS-B and $380 million F-22s (including increment upgrade costs) don’t help the overall DoD budget either. Nor does the demand to retain the nuclear triad when a biad would suffice by eliminating nuclear silos/ICBMs and reducing the number of nuclear capable subs and putting more missiles or warheads on each.
We already spend more money on the military than the next 18 or 19 nations in the world combined and almost all those nations are our allies. The debilities and dysfunctionalities of the U. S. Army over the past 69 years will not be resolved by pouring more money into it without pulling this organization out of the ground by its roots and radically reinventing it. Throwing good money after bad is a suckers game and does the Army and our country no service. Until the Army is completely revamped from top to bottom it’s future will be to lose core missions to the much more relevant USMC and Special Operations community.